#sorry most of it i just kind of expected (bram regaining his body and stopping the vampires. fyodor dying bc there isnt really anything els

[lesbianyosano]

legitimately what the fuck was that

[heyhowdyhellohi]

The story of Rae Chap 2

Chap 2: Waking up 3240 words

There are no windows set in the baby blue walls, and the room smells faintly of fabric softener and the yellow-orange flowers on the cream colored night stand next to the bed. All of the light in the room is artificial, but dimmed for comfort. The monitor of the tablet in Captain America’s hands flashes a silent, green notification that, based on her brain waves, the girl would wake up soon. The nurse quietly steps away to take the tablet to the doctor.

The first words out of Steve’s mouth are, “I’m sorry.”

The girl instantly jerks into action, yanking at the plastic handcuffs secured around her wrists only to fall back down onto the mattress. Involuntarily, her eyes shut tight and her hands rush unsuccessfully towards her head as she is rocked by sudden vertigo. Too much movement too quickly after waking up. After she has composed herself, she slowly sits up. Childishly, she glares, first up at Steve, then down at her feet, which she notices have each been securely encased in two inches of rubber in the form of unflattering boots.

“You lied.” She glares harder at her feet. Too many bad memories are tied to people trying to restrict her powers. She feels like she’s suffocating, the combined effect of sudden claustrophobia and the cold humid air she’s unaccustomed to.

“No, I-“

Her eyes snap to his in outrage. “How else could this have gone?” She tugs at her handcuffs for effect. “Don’t stand there and tell me you would have taken your answers and left.”

“I really wanted to talk. And maybe get you to come with us willingly. We’re on the same side.” He's trying his best to contain the situation, but he starts to sense that nothing he says will calm her.

“I’m not on a side. I just want to be left alone! Why can’t you just...” she was pulling frantically at the handcuffs now. The cold air burns her nostrils and dries her throat as she takes short fast breaths, and her entire body struggles. She’s trapped! She’s trapped and she has to get out! She doesn’t even know where she is! She needs to RUN! She can’t move! She needs to GET OUT! The red-headed Natasha soon rushes in and grabs her hand.

“Breathe. C’mon, inhale, hold, exhale. You’re having a panic attack. Everything is going to be okay. Listen to the sound of my voice. Listen! Inhale, hold, exhale. Good. You are in New York City in a recovery center. I’m going to release one of your hands, okay? Okay, there, you have a little more control. Are you with me?” Natasha noted that she came out of it quickly, and she had obviously experienced panic attacks before. She continues to hold the girl’s hand, crouched next to the bed. The girl relaxes somewhat. Steve had left.

“You’ve been out cold for a day. You’re stuck in this room for the night so the doctors can be sure you’re good to go. Then, bed rest for a while. We have a room for you when you’re ready.” Natasha smiled warmly at her.

“I won’t join you. Not now, not ever. I won’t be your pet.” The girl tried to be venomous and cold, but her voice was frail in its whisper and her hand stayed curled around Natasha’s. It had been very long since she held someone’s hand.

“That’s good. Personally, i always liked cats. You should drink that by the way, it will help you feel better.” Natasha gestures to a plastic cup on the night stand. The girl looks at it, but doesn’t move towards it.

“What’s your name? I’m Natasha.”

The girl doesn’t look away from the plastic cup and the orange juice that filled it. She thinks for a long time with pursed lips and indecision written on her face. “I’m ...Rae.” She admits it like a crime she got away with, like she’s afraid she might still get in trouble.

“It’s nice to meet you properly.” Natasha walks out with a kind smile. Rae takes a drink from the juice and decides she doesn’t care for the taste. She rubs at the still sore skin of both of her wrists and the goosebumps on her arms, shuffles her feet, and wiggles her toes. She identifies a cloth texture within the cumbersome boots and wonders whether she is wearing socks or if the material is somehow incorporated into the boots. Before she can delve into her inquiry, Steve reenters. She folds her legs under herself in a protective position, and observes his every movement.

“I would really appreciate it if you would answer a few of my questions,” Steve holds his hands up to show that he is not a threat, his voice unimposing.

“Why should I?” she spits the question at him like an insolent child.

“Because maybe the information you give us could help us keep what happened to you from happening to other people. HYDRA is very much still around. They’re always around, and if they aren’t, there are people just like them.” He sighs heavily as he sits down on a chair against the wall, and she considers it because he seems honest and very tired. She stares at the boots, running fingers over the rough rubber. She seems more conflicted that he had expected her to be.

Without looking up she says, “Ask.”

Steve’s eyebrows shoot up, but he quickly recovers. “How did you escape?”

“I’m not really sure. We’d whispered about it for years, but we never thought- Uh, something went wrong. There was chaos at the facility, people running around, shredding things. They tried to move us, get us on a helicopter. The moment we made it outside, we took our chances and just ran. I made it past the tree line, and I didn’t stop running until I passed out. Then, as soon as I woke up, I kept running. Many, many days of just moving and surviving. Eventually, I settled down where you found me. I’ve been there for a long time.” She has never talked about it to anyone. She hasn’t really had anyone to talk to in so long. Her eyes are glazed as she remembered all of the details again, every detail as though it had happened only yesterday. There wasn’t a day went by when she didn’t go through every second again, blaming herself for every wrong turn.

Steve allows her a moment of silence. The girl is a chameleon, switching constantly from child to traumatized war veteran. The ambivalence of her demeanor was somehow twice as heartbreaking than if she were just one or the other. She is a child who never had the opportunity to mature, but she is also the child who learned to fend for herself when no one was around to help her. And third, she is a weapon, the force of nature he had faced before bringing her in. How does she balance them? Carefully breaking her out of her reverie, he says, “We had heard rumors from lower ranking Hydra members about an enhanced army being trained. We finally heard it from enough sources to give it credibility. We tracked down a facility that we believed had been involved in experimenting on people. When we got there, anything that wasn’t shredded was burned, and there were- there were bodies. Execution style.”

“Punishment for my getting away.” she interposes stonily.

“The rumors, sometimes they spoke of an entire army, but most of them spoke of four.”

She whispers so softly that Steve has to lean in to make sure he doesn’t miss anything. “There were four of us. Lea, Ram, Tal, and me. Rae. We named ourselves in secret. The one thing we had control of in our lives was our names. They were ours.” she pauses, regaining her composure, before continuing in a slightly louder voice, “My powers work on mud and rocks, Lea’s worked on fire, Ram’s on water and Tal’s on air. Mine are bullet proof. Theirs, not so much.”

“I’m very sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything. Don’t- don’t disgrace their memory by apologizing to me like you had something to do with it. We were alone! You were nowhere. They were born alone and they died alone and I- you had absolutely nothing to do with it. Not while it mattered,” the glare was back on her face as she became more and more enraged. All the openness drained away.

“I don’t mean to take away from everything you’ve been through. I just meant to express my condolences. I know what it feels like to lose everything and to blame the world for it. I know you’re still hurting, but please don’t let your pain and your pride keep you from helping others. Please. I need you to tell me if you think they could make more enhanced humans.”

She took a deep breath, and as she exhaled she seemed to deflate. “Yes, definitely, but it would take a long time. They experimented on my parents as children, then altered my genetic make up as a zygote. The original process was too violent to be undergone by a normal matured person; the bodies kept burning up. The experimentation had been going on for so long that the lead scientist died and left his apprentice in charge when I was only 9 years old. Fortunately for you, he’s nowhere near as bright as Dr. Peters. Unfortunately, he was twice as cruel.”

“So, they would need to experiment on two generations before they built an army?”

“Four generations. I’m not the endgame. I was supposed to have a child with Ram, and Lea with Tal. Then our children would have had a child. My grandchild would have been the end game. The last stage of project Genesis. They would have used his DNA to make more.”

“That’s...” but he trailed off. There was no word strong enough to describe how atrocious HYDRA’s plan was this time. “The apprentice’s name?”

“Dr. Bram Jeckel. The man for whom the eighth layer of hell is reserved.”