An Unlikely Romance - The Avengers (Part 1)

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You had no sense of time as you awoke. You couldn't even tell how long you had been awake, or how long it had taken you to figure out exactly what time was. You might have preferred unconsciousness. That would've come with darkness, with numbness, and with relief. Instead you were left feeling like you had been hung out to dry, your limbs and torso aching and feeling like every time you twitched, your skin was pulled too tightly and pinched in the most uncomfortable of ways. You had your eyes closed, but opening them did nothing anyway when you eventually tried. The room was pitch black and your head was secured to the wall, leaving you not only unable to see, but almost entirely unable to move.

You couldn't tell if the room was silent, or incredibly, obnoxiously loud. The room seemed completely silent except for a slight ringing noise, persistent and annoying. Yet every time you so much as twitched your arms or legs, it felt like the world itself exploded with the strange sounds of metal jangling against metal, echoing for seconds at a time before it finally died down long after you'd stopped moving. It was all that stopped you from trying to move or escape; when you first awoke you had thrashed violently, but you had succeeded only in giving yourself a migraine that had lasted for... well, you still had no sense of time, but a very long while. Likely exacerbated by that ever-present whining.

What concerned you most was not your lack of sight, or your overly sensitive hearing, but your lack of memory. You had a vague recollection of your own appearance – when you thought hard, you could remember your face, your body shape, and a scattering of other details. Beyond that though, there was only an inky haze. You were distinctly aware of the missing pieces, and how unbelievably vast the gaps in your mind were, but you had no idea how to begin to fill those gaps. You couldn't even come up with a name for yourself. But you'd been hanging there for so long you had moved past panic, past frantic recollections. Instead you were simply waiting. Waiting for something, anything, to change.

That change was subtle, and you wondered if you would have even noticed it if you were not so utterly bored. It was a break in the high-pitched tone plaguing you, a tiny noise that disrupted it and finally allowed your mind a reprieve aside from jangling your bindings until they drove you insane. The noise sounded like bubble wrap, tiny and distant pops that echoed and reverberated around you. You started to count the moments between the pops, and noticed them growing more and more infrequent. Eventually they faded away, and for a time you wondered if that was the end of it.

But at the count of a hundred and ninety-seven after the last noise, you finally got something new. It wasn't a sound, more like a wave of pure force – you felt it with your entire body, and it hurt like fuck-shit-fuck-there-it-went-again.

This time it wasn't just the wave, though. It was followed by what sounded like explosions, and then across your closed eyes the first flashes of light you could remember abruptly coated your eyelids. Even with your eyes firmly shut the light seemed blinding, as if a thousand suns had suddenly invaded your confinement and were dancing around you. Your ears were ringing, but even as they started to clear there was too much noise to understand anything. It sounded like you were in the middle of a rally, words you couldn't make out shouted so loudly it was as if ten thousand people chanted them in unison.

With all the noise all you could do was struggle, adrenaline flowing through your veins and fueling you beyond normal efforts. Whatever you were doing must have worked, although your eyes still hadn't adjusted enough to see it for yourself. Something snapped around your hands and they pried free of the wall. That freed you up to use all your energy on your legs, prying at your restraints until they faded away.

The moment you freed yourself, something black blurred your vision. You didn't recognize it as an assailant until something struck you in the stomach so hard that you nearly doubled over. With no idea who or what was attacking you or how to strike them, you lashed out furiously. Amidst the commotion around you, for the first time you were able to pick out a sound – the "whoosh" of air leaving someone's lungs, followed by a long groan of pain as the dark shadow left your vision. The noises still seemed far too loud, but they were overwhelmed by the pounding and thrumming in your ears, the sound of your own heartbeat echoing furiously.

Your eyes were adjusting, but only quickly enough to tell that now three figures approached instead of one. You could hear them shouting, but the words echoed in your ears and rebounded from the walls, clamoring over one another until they were indecipherable. With all your senses overloaded, all you knew to do was to lash out. You rolled low to the ground to avoid whatever these new threats might be doing, then started to kick out wildly. What you assumed were limbs snapped under your lashing blows, and screams of pain started to fill the air until your attackers too were on the ground. Then you stood again, rubbing at your eyes and shouting out for everything to stop.

Another figure came into view, blurry and fast as it was. This one was black, but with something new. Flashes of crimson, vaguely dancing about like an eternal flame at the corners of your vision. You were unable to see their approach before it was too late – something grabbed one of your arms, a powerful blow was dealt to your stomach, and your entire world began to turn upside down. The figure called something out as it fell, so close that it was as if it were putting a megaphone directly to your ear.

You hit the ground headfirst, stunning you and causing the room around you to spin, undoing what little your vision had improved so far. You took a moment to orient yourself and began to push up off the floor. Some progress was made, but whatever had knocked you down had begun to apply enough leverage to keep you down. With you held to the floor, it leaned in and said something.

"тихо, спокойный."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

The sounds were meaningless to you, but they got you to stop struggling for a moment as you contemplated them. They were loud, incredibly so, especially since they were spoken directly into your ear, but they did not disturb you in the same way that the other noises did. As loud as they were you could tell they were whispered calmly. They were spoken without aggression, despite the situation, and though the tone sounded dangerous it did not seem hostile.

You were still preparing to struggle as the other voices kept up and a loud tapping sound reverberated through the room, but the voice returned. This time you couldn't even make out many of the words, just a cacophony of sounds, but they were so soothing. There was a melody to them, a rhythm that had you gently humming along before you even understood what you were doing. It helped that the voice performed it perfectly, and for as loud as it was, sounded beautiful.

You realized that the presence, aside from holding you down, was not hurting you in any way. In fact, it was barely applying any other pressure. It just continued to sing in that sweet, soft voice. These people had come in, whoever they were, before you had even broken free, so it didn't seem like they were trying to keep you captured. It could have been a rescue effort. They could have been allies of yours; you certainly wouldn't remember if they were. They could be enemies, too, your captors or worse. But if they were, you didn't have the ability to fight back, not as stunned as you were by this overload to your senses and with as many as you seemed to be facing.

You laid your head on the ground and slowly ceased your struggling, shutting your eyes to drown out some of the light. A soft pinch came at your neck, upsetting you for a moment, but in a moment it faded away. Your senses began to return somewhat, feeling clearer and less overpowering.

"I- what are you doing, I can-".

"More!"

The pinching intensified, and a moment later your senses shut down completely.