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A bright white light.
When Lorelei woke up, she did so gasping. Her eyes teared up at the sudden brightness, ears registering the beeping as a heart monitor and her whole body trembling and aching. As her sight adjusted, she could finally make up her surroundings; she was in what looked to be a hospital room but more modernized if possible, with technology unfamiliar to her and unlike what she commonly sees in hospitals. Suddenly, a voice spoke up, startling her.
"Good morning, Miss Cliff. It is now 4:17 am on Tuesday, July 14th 2015. You are in the Hospital Wing of the new Avengers Facility in Upstate New York."
The only thing that sunk in was the time. 4:17 am. Not much has changed, after all.
"Who are you?" She called out, voice rough with sleep and exhaustion. "And why am I here?"
The female voice replied. "I am Mr. Stark's AI, F.R.I.D.A.Y, happy to be of service. You acquired multiple bullet wounds from the battle in Sokovia and have been in a coma for two weeks, Miss Cliff."
"What?" she gasped, immediately looking down at her body but she couldn't see a single wound, or even bandages to prove that she was remotely injured much less shot multiple times. "I don't..."
"I have alerted Mr. Stark and other interested parties of your consciousness, Miss Cliff. They will meet with you shortly."
Shortly came too soon, and just when Lorelei finally closed her eyes and started to drift off, the door to her room bursted open and various people walked in.
The first one was a middle aged female doctor who immediately went to check her vitals and asked her common questions, while the others she recognized from somewhere else. Tony Stark was present like the AI told her, as well as Captain America (she forgot his real name), the guy she saw on the plane, a brunette woman and the white-haired man who saved her—wait.
"You're dead," she gasped out the minute she saw the man, watching him raise a brow with a small smirk before he approached her bed. "I saw you."
It was Tony that replied to her. "That's the thing, Hermione Granger, he's supposed to be dead and he isn't and we need to know why. Clint?"
"I was there," the man whose name supposedly is Clint announced. "I was the one who laid Pietro's body right next to you. I saw you hold his hand and scream like someone cut you open, and that wasn't even remotely close to the weirdest shit that happened after."
Pietro stepped forward. "I woke up." Every head turned to the man, with the brunette woman nodding at him to continue. "I was supposed to be dead and I woke up."
"His gun wounds appeared on your body, Miss Cliff," Tony shook his head almost in disbelief. "Exactly where they used to be on his body. And Pietro's healed like they were never there to begin with."
Lorelei shut her eyes as if doing so would block out what they were saying, as if doing so would stop what's real. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Are you with Striker? Is that it?" Captain America frowned, crossing his arms in front of his chest in disapproval. "Are you a mutant?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." She repeated more firmly, unable to meet their eyes.
"You saved my brother's life," The brunette told her. "I need to know how."
Lorelei only shook her head, scanning the room for possible exits and coming up blank other than the door her unwanted company went in.
"Well," Pietro shrugged, taking out a pocket knife. "Only one way to find out."
Before anyone could stop him, he had already crossed the room towards her and sliced a thin cut on her forearm, making the other avengers tense up.
"Hey!"
"We've talked about this!"
"That was—"
"Go on, look!" Pietro said calmly, pointing at her already healing arm. "All healed up."
Everyone went quiet, seeing blood on her skin but no open wound. It was similar to what she witnessed herself do two weeks before when she barely escaped the ambushed cafe in Sokovia, mere minutes before everything literally went to shit and the whole city flew up.
"Look, I don't know why this is happening, alright?" She finally answers with an upset frown, staring down at her shaking hands. "I just know that it wasn't always like this. And I never...healed anyone else before."
The others looked at each other in silent conversations before the brunette woman spoke. "She's telling the truth."
"You know we'd have to keep you here, right?" Tony Stark asked her with pursed lips. "For research purposes."
Lorelei narrowed her eyes at the billionaire. "You can't just imprison me here and make me your lab rat. I have rights!"
"Yes, and right now you are a potential danger to the world that we're supposed to be protecting," Captain America told her sternly, making her feel like she was ten years old instead of twenty-one. He certainly had the grandfather scolding down to a T. "We can't allow you to roam around freely without confirming for ourselves that you won't harm anyone."
She could feel a headache starting to form, making the dark-haired girl all the more frustrated. "How the hell am I going to harm anyone? I heal people. I healed you!" She turned accusingly to Pietro who had been watching them from the corner of the room he retreated to earlier.
"You didn't heal Pietro, you brought him back from the dead." Clint argued with a hard voice. "He was dead. I closed his eyes with my own fingers. Do you know how many people would want you just for that power alone?"
Suddenly, in flashes of memories, Lorelei remembered. She remembered listening to some sort of instinct telling her to reach for the fast man's hand, she remembered the pain—and god, did it hurt. But before that, she remembered life. She remembered hearing a heartbeat. It was faint but it was there. So, once again she shook her head and looked up from her hands to stare directly at Pietro even though she was talking to the others. "He wasn't dead. Not yet. Life hadn't left his body yet. I felt it, and that's why I did what I did. I didn't even know I could do that, but something made me reach out, take his hand and do it because I felt it—felt him. He was slipping away but not quite yet."
She glanced at the speechless faces of what she had come to know as the avengers before shifting her gaze back to Pietro. "He was lucky he was brought to the right ship."
