Kill Your Mind ⋙ Avengers

s e v e n

[E D I T E D]

KILL YOUR MIND
❝life is simply a mix of mayhem and magnolias, so embrace this gentle riot and gather flowers along the way.❞

07. Superficial Secrets

WHEN STEVE ROGERS HAD BEEN TOLD TO TALK  to a possible new recruit, this was not what he had expected. Call him 'old-fashioned' but it's his firm belief that children are simply not meant to be weapons. During the war, Steve had seen his fair share of bright wyes, underage, soldiers who had enlisted with forged papers similar to his own. Boys as young as twelve had managed to fight on the front lines. Steve had also seen his fair share of bright eyed, underage, soldiers dying gruesome and slow deaths. He'd seen the civilian casualties of war, clutched a four-year-old girl as she had choked to death on the thick ash from the city burning around them, and so could confidently say that he openly opposed children being used as agents within SHIELD. Nevertheless, when he walks into the very familiar observation room to see the crumpled figure of a young teenage girl, he's instantly on edge. Coincidentally, Fury had left out the part where he tells him that they were recruiting nothing more than a kid. Steve had walked in totally blind. He'd been told as little as humanely possible so all he really knew, was that she was beyond powerful and had been the one to kill three of SHIELD's top agents.

Elizabeth looked bored to uncomfortable to put it lightly. After Director Fury had left, the scientists had begun to get a lot grabbier. Knowing that their senior wouldn't be back anytime soon meant that they were quick to tranquilise the girl further, take numerous blood samples, and do a few basic motor evaluations. This had all left Elizabeth shaking, having triggered multiple repressed memories from her younger years, and a twitching mess. Elizabeth Tyler didn't cry. She just didn't. Yet here she was, dry heaving for ten minutes straight as the continuous flashing memories of pain, and blood, and urine, and convulsing seizures didn't cease. Shivering all over, she was still too drugged out to recognise her surroundings and the scientists? They were taking notes with furrowed eyebrows and pursed lips. Teeth chattering, Elizabeth didn't even know who she was for the first few minutes. Whatever sedative they'd given her, it had turned her brain to mush. To her, she had somehow reverted to her scared fourteen-year-old self trapped forever in a dark, dank, room.

And ever so slightly, the houseplant's leaves began to turn brown.

Steve was disgusted as he watched the small girl begin to hyperventilate only to be aided by not one person. The scientists at SHIELD had never been particularly nice with their methods, they cared more about results than personal comfort, but it still made Steve feel sick to his stomach as the girl who, in his eyes, was nothing more than a young child, attempt to calm herself down.

The agents at the doors grimaced at the sight and turned their heads subtly away from the crying girl, but soon, the laboured breathing stopped.