Of The Wolves And The Orphans

A Gamble

 I feel sweat and adrenaline drench my entire body. My sweat pants and shirt are soaked while my fists feel sweaty and heavy in my boxing gloves. I raise them to my cheekbones, flipping my dark hair from sticking to my face. The punching bag in front of me sways slightly from my last assault.

"Move!" Barton's annoying voice barks behind me.

I breathe sharply, blink, and slightly widen my eyes all at the same time in a face of annoyed exasperation. I paused for one moment, and you're already up my ass. I conveniently pretend the punching bag is Hawkeye's face and attack it like it's the devil. I throw all the force in my body at the bag, gritting my teeth and punching it over and over and over again with haywire and indirect punches. I currently don't really care about the accuracy; I just want to beat the shit out of anything right now. My face contorts into an expression of pain, fury, frustration, desperation, and all the intense emotions I've been feeling lately. I feel myself start to lose control on my carefully bottled up feelings and my vision begins to tunnel. The bag no longer represents a training tool; it's the injustice and unfairness I've been feeling. No matter how many times I punch it over and over and over again, it stays right there, as unaffected by my brutality as if I was never even here. This infuriates me to an incensed rage that consumes all my thought, focus, and sense. My vision is completely red. If possible, I throw myself into the bag even more, completely using my all-consuming, seething rage to hurl myself onwards. I am no longer just using bone-shattering punches, but bone-snapping kicks as well. I integrate all different kicks, punches, and any other type of defense I know into a rhythm that is brutally and gruelingly mollifying. I smile in a sick and twisted sense of pleasure as my red tunnel vision grows even more intense.

Suddenly, it isn't the bag in front of me anymore, it's Hawkeye. I gasp in shock, feeling his rough hands capture my wrists. Swiftly I just catch him making a leg swipe at my knees. Without thinking, I jump over his kick and twist my wrists to get out of his grip. His eyes darken when he sees my resistance and his grip turns into iron bands.

All at once, my hearing returns in a tingling roar.

"Keira!" he thunders in a voice that makes me falter. Suddenly, I blink and my tunnel red vision dissipates along with my fury, betraying me to be so much more fragile, smaller, and weaker compared to the menacing man in front of me.

I see his next move coming, but I'm so disoriented I don't try to resist. He twists my wrist behind me, forcing me to whip around and give him my back so he doesn't snap either my ulna or my radius clean in half (both being bones that connect the forearm to the many little bones that make the wrist, some of which are the pisiform, scaphoid, lunate, I could go on). He kicks my knees from under me, forcing me to kneel with my back leaning at an odd angle backwards and my arm twisted at an even odder angle behind me. His other hand grabs my hair, yanking my head back painfully putting even more strain on my arm and back.

I grit my teeth as I stare up at the ceiling and claw at his hand in my hair with my own free hand. I'm able to work my fingers under one of his and yank on it, but he's too strong for me when all I am using is my muscle strength and no leverage while he has superior muscle strength and perfect leverage.

"When I give you the order to stop, you are going to stop or I will be damn sure to make you scream in pain until you will never disobey my orders again," he hisses in my ear.

At any other time, his deadly promises would make me doubt his sanity, but I'm so confused right now it has almost no effect on my already-maxed-to-the-limit inner turmoil. All I can think iswhat...the...hell...? How did I completely lose it? The amount and intensity of my frustration and anger scares me. I could've killed anyone at that given moment without a second thought. And to be honest, right now I'm flip shit scared.