Marble Statues ⏃ Captain America [4]

one

01. | SOKOVIA

NIGHTTIME ON THE mountain was beautiful.

    Moonlight shone across deep snowdrifts. A majestic forest of ancient pines stood over an idyllic valley, and the landscape's slope led to an ancient stone fortress. Painters would dream of capturing this scene on canvas—without the small security webcams mounted everywhere, of course.

    Iron Man's—Tony Stark—highly specialized lasers, called repulsors, blasted down from the sky, battering the lead Hydra tank. Captain America's—Steve Rogers—motorcycle screamed as it charged enemy troops who were jumped out of their transports into the woods. As Hydra soldiers continued to pour out of the fortress, a flying war hammer swooped out of the sky and bowled over several of them before returning to the hands of its owner.

    Enemies in powerful mecha-suit exoskeletons fired lethal blasts into the woods at Thor, but missed.

    One Hydra driver brought his jeep around, trying to get in range of the Avengers, when his door was suddenly ripped open and Black Widow—Natasha Romanoff—kicked him aside. She jumped behind the wheel and took control of the vehicle while two of the Avengers climbed on top of the jeep.

    Christina Sitma—Red Cobra—was truly amazed at how many Hydra bases there were. After taking down the ones in America, they had branched out to international lands to countries like Peru, Austria, Portugal, and Greece. But, fortunately for the Avengers, the Hydra bases were easy to take from the Hydra agents and were defeated.

    A small country in Eastern Europe was where their next Hydra base was located; led by Baron von Strucker. Every time they went to these bases, they were there for two reasons—the first was that it was Hydra and they needed to be stopped, and the second was that they were searching for Loki's—God of Mischief—scepter. With the damage that the specter caused in New York a few years ago, they were determined to receive it and have Thor Odinson return it to Asgard.

    Despite being held captive and having been tortured—physically and emotionally—for over two months, the sounds of gunfire or the feeling of hands enclosing around her throat had no effect on Christina's resolve. In fact, these things seemed to sharpen her mind, not cripple like most people with PTSD. She knew that every person was different when it came to this sort of thing, but she couldn't help but feel that she was different in other ways. What other people would consider triggers, were her sanity—they kept her aware.

    It was the silence that killed Christina.

    All those quiet nights in her concrete cell deep in Nazi Germany with snow whirling in through the solitary widow down onto her bare body were what haunted her nightmares. She would take all the torture they could dish out, even the Strappado, over the piercing silence that consumed her every night. Christina quickly came to realize that one could find sanctuary in chaos—in noise—but silence was like a deep dark abyss she couldn't escape.

    "Belle!" A voice shouted.

    Snapping back into reality, Christina quickly remembered where she was and ducked as a large blue laser blast came flying at her head, missing her by a mere millimeter. She felt embarrassment flame her face and she stood, firing her gun at the two jeeps that were flanking them. She stood beside Clint Barton—Hawkeye—leaning as close to him a possible without getting in the way of his quiver as he fired his arrows. They were balancing upright on the jeep that Natasha Romanoff had commandeered.

    "Where's your head at, kid?" Clint called to Christina, who was refusing to meet his eyes. "Belle, you're slacking!"

    "My head is right here, Barton!" Christina shouted over the commotion. She rolled her eyes in annoyance, firing at the jeep that was pulling up beside them, the last thing she needed was for them to start fretting about her more. For the first few weeks since her escape, they wouldn't even let her go to the restroom by herself, afraid that she would do...something. "And how many times have I told you not to call me that? You know that I hate it."