The Sound of Silence

Chapter 11

  Despite all of your protests that this was a terrible idea you ended up in one of the training rooms with Cap, Tony, Nat, Clint, Thor, and Loki. Everyone was back in casual clothes and had gathered cushions and pillows for this exercise. Bruce had been excluded from this activity. Everyone decided it was safer if he weren't compromised by your powers. So he was playing by himself in his lab and was probably much happier, though everyone was super curious about your abilities, so they were all excited to see what you could actually do. All that most of them knew was that your voice was dangerous.

"Y/N, we have to see what your powers can do before we can start helping you learn to control them," Cap reminded you in 'team mom' voice when you hesitated at the door to the training room. Your hands started to fly through another protest, but Cap cut you off. "No one is going to be upset for whatever happens. Even Tony. We're the ones asking you to do this, we're not going to be upset with the results," he reminded you. Again.

You sighed and let yourself be herded into the training room. "We don't know much about your abilities," Nat told you gently. It was intimidating to be surrounded by all of them watching you for answers.

[I have three powers that I know of] you started. You explained quickly about how your speech hurt or knocked people out, your singing entranced them, and of course you spoke prophecies.

"Well, let's start with option number one then," Clint quipped, trying to lighten the mood.

[You might want to sit down] you told them. They all settled on the cushions and looked at you expectantly.

You tried to think of something to say, but everything sounded lame in your head so you pulled something you'd had to memorize for English: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date" Clint and Tony were the first ones to drop when you spoke. They were the most human. Your words were soft, but before you'd even finished the sonnet, everyone was passed out on their cushions. Thor and Loki had lasted the longest, but even they couldn't fight forever. You sighed and sat down on one of the cushions while you waited for them to recover. They were just unconscious, not hurt, not this time.

"Shakespeare would knock anyone out," Tony grumbled when he and the others finally stirred a couple minutes later, though Loki was protesting that he liked it. They were all rubbing away the migraines too. You had tried to warn them this was a stupid idea. "Pick something else," he continued. You rolled your eyes at his ridiculous reaction.

"Try again," Cap bid you gently. He was analyzing something about what had happened.

You nodded and opened your mouth to recite something else, sitting cross-legged on your cushion. "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort." Though your words were barely above a whisper, and they fought it valiantly, it still only took a couple sentences to knock them all out again. You were looking down at your lap when they came to again. You hated doing this, even though they'd asked for the demonstration. Tony opened his mouth to say something, but Nat hit him hard with a pillow to shut him up.

"So what happens if you actually raise your voice?" Nat asked. You shook your head, horrified by that idea.

"We need to know," Clint told you. You shook your head more emphatically. That was a terrible idea.

"Y/N," was all Cap had to say.

[This is a horrible idea] you protested. Again. Why couldn't they see how awful this was.