An Unlikely Romance - The Avengers (Part 1)

Your New Home

The last few days had been a blur, a traumatizing blur of mentally trying to overcome and compile everything you'd seen and heard during your flight from that place. Blood, bone, tissue, screaming, and a frantic desire for survival waged war memories as your subconscious tried to decipher the most important lessons to learn from your encounter. More than once you awoke in a cold sweat, some dream of the HYDRA agents overpowering Natasha, overpowering Clint, of you being alone without either SHIELD agent as the enemy descended upon you... or, more rarely, with one of the SHIELD agents bearing down upon you, their weapon drawn, ready to finally rid themselves of your burden...

That had been the worst. Clint and Natasha had both seen you wake like that mid-transport, as the three of you made your way across the countryside. Neither of them said anything, but surprisingly, both of them looked pretty empathetic. You couldn't think of what to say. Surely after all they'd probably done and seen, they had plenty of nightmares of their own. Thinking about that made you feel... slightly better.

By now you were past the initial trauma. Your dreams were still vivid and shocking, but they didn't have the same impact. They were no worse than your daily thoughts, which were spent pouring over every memory, thinking on what could have happened if you did one thing wrong, or if your helpers did one thing wrong... or if your enemies had done one thing right.

Now when you could forget the stress and worry of your fight for survival, you at least had something to be grateful for. You'd escaped that prison, that awful place, and your life inside an underground bunker. You had new memories, not only of Clint and Natasha trying to fight to save you, not only risking their own lives for your sake... but memories of the sun.

Memories of green things, plants and bushes and leaves that crumpled under your feet as you sprinted to a distant extraction zone. Bark and bristles and thorns that lashed out at you during your mad dash. Of course, even the most sanguine of thoughts and memories couldn't erase your nightmares, but they could console you in your waking moments during the darkest parts of the night. They could keep you sane when your deepest fears came to the surface, and give you the strength to make it to the dawn.

And the dawn... what a miraculous sight it was. How fantastic, how miraculous. Only a few days ago you'd never thought you'd see the sunlight again, and now things had changed. You had a new location provided by SHIELD for you, a place you could properly call a home. It was pretty barren, overall; a kitchen with a microwave, a refrigerator, and a lot of empty cupboards and counter space. A living room with a television with basic cable. A bedroom with a single bed on a metal frame, a spare room, and the sun room.

Oh, the sun room. The thought alone was still like ecstasy in your mind. You weren't sure if the room had always been like this, or if one of the others requested a remodel after you confessed your fears to them so many times. It was at the corner of the apartment - the corner of the building, actually - and one full wall, as well as half of the other wall, were floor-to-ceiling with some kind of tinted glass, probably a lot stronger of a tint than you could tell without being outside. You doubted Fury wanted anyone besides SHIELD spying in on you. The glass was thick, probably bulletproof, although you didn't bother testing it. The building you were in was the tallest one around to discourage people peering in, and it was a good two hundred feet to the ground or better by a quick glance. Even with whatever enhancements Fury said you had, there was no way you were surviving that fall.

Fury hadn't gained a terrible amount of faith in you, despite your best efforts. Security measures at the apartment were still extreme. You had a space on the top floor of an apartment building to yourself now, instead of a single room in what could be described generously as a "supervised containment" facility, but there were plenty of measures to keep you there. The door to the hallway was locked with a code, and you were guessing that if you found your way outside of it anyway, you'd just be in a deeper layer of a proper SHIELD facility outside.