memory week @ a_facility
Warning: May contain violence, sexual content, and disturbing imagery.
Brothers+++
Your journey to find your mother, the Scarlet Witch, has turned up fruitless. At least you got to run halfway around the world, that’s always fun to go speeding over oceans with the wind in your hair, so that’s something, and you ended up briefly in Hell, that’s got to be a good party story. But after all that excitement, you and your twin are sitting in a middle row of a Grayhound bus, in full costume, idly discussing your adventure.
“So, if you can teleport and I have superspeed, why are we taking the bus home again?” You ask, putting on that bored and flippant tone you’re known for, but as you look over at your dark-haired mirror image, he has a laughing, sheepish smile on his face, and you can’t really say you mind this too much - extending your brotherly adventure by another hour or two. He’s your twin, after all, despite the strange circumstances of your births, and he’s been missing from your life for so long.
He never answers your question, just starts in on another topic of conversation. Maybe he noticed your absence all his life, too.
Game Night+++
Kate and Cassie are out for the evening. They’ve purposely removed themselves from the Young Avengers’ lair, and it’s really no wonder why. It’s boys’ night. All the male Young Avengers are there, Eli, Teddy, Jonas, Billy, gathered in the game room with its massive couch and widescreen TV. Eli brought the X-Box 360, Teddy the PS3, and they both brought extra controllers and armfuls of games. They’re sitting in a row on the sofa, you’re watching from the doorway, nursing a plastic red cup of Dr. Pepper from their extensive snack table. It isn’t the first game night you’ve seen, but you aren’t sure if they want you around still.
You’re new. You’re the outsider. You don’t know them as well as they know each other. It’s Kate who invited you onto the team in the first place, not Eli or your supposed brother.
They start another multiplayer brawl game. Jonas is good because he’s a machine himself, Teddy and Eli are clearly pros. Billy’s a little more uncoordinated with the controller, though.
“Chainsaw, chainsaw, chainsaw!”
“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” You hear Eli and Teddy respectively yelling at each other. Jonas is always quiet, but there’s a smile on his face. Billy is laughing.
“Where’s my guy? Hell, did I fall off again?” You turn to leave as Billy speaks. You’ve gotten your soda, you’re good for the evening. But then he turns around on the couch and calls your name, still flushed with good humor. “Tommy! Come help me out here! They’re demolishing me!”
You don’t turn to look at him right away. You take that moment to let a smile, just briefly, before that flippant, bored look is back on your face. It takes you two seconds to zip over to the couch, squeeze in between the arm of it and Billy, and snatch the controller out of his hands, fingers mashing buttons at superspeed. “Here, let me show you how it’s done, little bro.”
You and Billy win sixteen out of twenty-one rounds.
Green Feety Pajamas+++
All you can do is stare at Kate Bishop when she hands you a tissue-paper wrapped bundle. You’ve pulled off the paper, and you’re not sure what you’re staring at - a bundle of green and silver spandex, shiny and slick and sleek. On top there are a pair of orange goggles. You can see an orange triangle on the costume about where your abs would be - it’ll point right at your crotch when you’re wearing it. You look down at it, then up again at Kate’s smiling face.
“I chose you a codename, too. Speed.”
You’re speechless. Not because you’re touched at this offer to join the ‘Young Avengers’, but because... “You want me to run around wearing green spandex feety pajamas with a bright orange dick arrow on ‘em?” A grin touches your lips. “Are you hinting at something, Bishop?”
She smacks you upside the head before she leaves. You think you’re in love.
Fearless+++
You’re actually free. The entire compound is in a tizzy, bustling with panicked people running this way and that, guards and mandroids rushing toward the subject that had been broken out of his cell. You’re the subject. Doctors are fleeing. You catch up to them, of course, because no one is faster than you, they made sure of that. You slide to a stop in front of the cowards in the white coats that try to run from you, hold out your hands. They’re vibrating, blurs on the ends of your arms, and you feel the malicious glee rising up in you. “Let’s see how much I can accelerate your atomic structure before you explode, doctors!” You crow at your tormenters. They aren’t anymore, though, they are your prey.
“Down boy! Young Avengers don’t kill!” A girl’s voice yells, and then you’re flying through the air. She’s tackled you, a beautiful girl with long dark hair and purple shades at night (hella classy, you think). She’s in purple leather. Lying flat on your back in the grass, all you can do is stare up at her with the stupidest expression on your face. Green eyes meet blue and your attention is completely off the doctors. “You look just like-” She seems stunned.
“So I’ve been told. Who are you?” There isn’t any fear in those blue, blue eyes. You’re a dangerous monster, but she isn’t afraid of you.
Mirror+++
You feel it when the power dampeners on your cell go out. There’s a massive difference between being in your little hole and being out of it - you always feel tired, sluggish, slow with the dampeners on, and when they’re off, the energy buzzes in your very atoms. You feel the dampeners go out. It doesn’t take you long to vaporize the door to try and make your escape from this hell- except then you come face to face with three teenagers, about your age, a girl, a robot, and...
You find yourself staring into a mirror, almost. This boy has your face. His hair is dark and his eyes are brown, but it’s still your face.
You only mull over that for a matter of seconds before your attention is elsewhere. They’re breaking you out.
Mother--- Claimed for Kate
You’re six years old and oh so wise. You’re a big boy, but you still have nightmares every time your parents fight. They fight a lot. They fought after dinner, an argument you didn’t really understand, and you wake in the middle of the night after having the scary dream again. You don’t know what’s going on in the dream, just that it’s frightening, that there is a woman in a red cape and a man in a yellow cape who couldn’t save you and the other baby in it.
You hop out of your bed, dragging your big stuffed unicorn with you (it’s a girly toy, you know, but daddy brought it for you a few months ago, the very first time he remembered your birthday). The hall seems a lot longer in the middle of the night, and a monster could jump out of any shadow. You hug your unicorn close as you finally make it to mommy’s door and knock.
“Mommy? I had a nightmare,” you say, in a small voice. The door swings open, and your mother stares down at you.
“Again? Go back to bed, Tommy,” she replies. Mom always sounds tired and frustrated. You open your mouth to ask if you can sleep with her, but she closes the door on you and doesn’t answer your pleas.
You cry half the night, sitting in the hallway and hugging your unicorn, afraid the monster magician with the demon hands will come get you.
Explosion---
You’re thirteen. Eighth grade sucks. You’ve got a crush on the girl who sits in front of you in algebra, but she called you a creep when you wrote her a note, so you threw the note at her stupid head, and put gum in her hair the next day. Unfortunately, she knows it was you, so you find yourself in the principal’s office, fidgeting mightily in a chair. They can’t get a hold of either of your parents; dad stormed out last night and is nowhere to be found, mom is probably working. The principal has turned his distaste on you - you can see it in his eyes, in the turn of his lips.
You want to smack that smug scowl off his stupid fat face. It drives you insane when they judge you, just because your parents never come to PTA meetings or open houses, and you’re in trouble of some sort every other week. Your grades aren’t great because it’s hard to pay attention. It feels like you’ve been in a constant state of restlessness since you were twelve.
He starts yelling at you about all the trouble you cause. You’re angry, you want to leave, you want to run, you want to gogogo- Your squirming is getting worse. The principal calls you out on it, tells you to sit still for once, but you’re practically vibrating. Everything around you is practically vibrating, and the principal takes notice.
You feel a sick sense of satisfaction at his fear. Your eyes are alight. Everything vibrates around you faster and faster andfasterandfaster-
The next thing you know, you’re being pulled out of the demolished rubble of your school amidst news crews and frightened onlookers. You’re half-conscious, but you grin anyway. Let them judge you now.
Mutation---
Your parents are with you. You’re in a cold white doctor’s office, wearing a prison jumpsuit, sitting on top of the chilly table. Your feet are cuffed together, but they’ve removed your handcuffs for the physical examination. Dad is holding mom, for the first time that you can remember. They look scared. The two guards at the door look bored. You look dull and tired and flat. You’re thirteen, and everyone is preparing for your court trial. An examination is part of that, your lawyer says. If they can prove there’s something wrong with you, he can get you off on probation, maybe. Juvie, at the worst.
They’ve got an expert examining you. You hate the poking and prodding and constant questions, but you suffer through it.
“Mr. and Mrs. Shepherd,” he says solemnly, the papers from your bloodwork in his hands. “I’m afraid your son is a mutant.”
Your mother bursts into tears. Your father’s expression tightens as he looks at you, and you see the revulsion.
You can only shrug.
Abandonment---
They only let you see your mother through thick plexiglass, with full power-dampener cuffs around your wrists. You can hardly move your arms. Your hands are enclosed inside so tight you can hardly feel your fingers. You focus on that, on your hands in your lap, instead of your mother’s tear-stained face on the other side of the plexiglass. “You-... Please, mom, you’ve got to... I don’t know, you’ve got to get me out of here.” You’re talking lowly because it frightens her when you raise your voice. “It’s awful, mom-”
“I can’t, Thomas,” she tells you in a quavering voice as she stands, gathering up her purse.
It’s the last time you ever see her. Dad stopped coming a long time ago. The doctors can do whatever they want to you now.
Don’t Stop Running--- Claimed for Billy
They never take you anywhere without power dampener cuffs on. Today is no different, but they shove you into a large room, about the size of a football stadium, with a track. The walls are covered in wires and cameras and sensors. Once the heavy metal doors are shut behind you, the cuffs drop off your hands and feet automatically. They’ve already covered you in small sensors, read-out devices for gathering data. You aren’t wearing any shoes, and the asphalt is rough under your feet.
There’s a large pane of glass, high up on one of the walls. You can see the doctors watching you through it. “Don’t try to blow yourself an escape route. The doors are guarded and your powers will only work inside that room,” they say. You give them the dirtiest look you can manage. You don’t move.
“Run.” Another one says. “Run, or you’re going to wish you had. Run and don’t stop until we’ve gathered all the data we need.”
You know better than to disobey, so you run circles around the room. But you don’t run as fast as you can - your legs hurt. The muscles ache to the bone, the incisions from where they cut into you to see the muscle formation in your calves and thighs tug and pull and burn.
Panels in the walls open up, all around you. “We know you can do better than that. Run.” Guns slide out of the walls. “Run as fast as you can, and don’t stop.”
Suddenly you’re trapped in a rain of bullets from every side. Your eyes widen, your heart nearly stops. Adrenline pumps through your veins and you run, god do you run, faster than you ever have in your fourteen years of life. You’re so fast you can weave around bullets, though every moment of it hurts. A bullet pierces your calf, and you cry out and collapse, covering your head with your hands and trying not to cry. You’re going to die, they’re going to kill you-- but then the rain of gunfire ceases. Armored and armed guards burst into the room to restrain you. You struggle, but you’re shaking too badly and in too much pain to do much. You could blow them up, but you can’t make the molecules move right, you can’t concentrate. They cuff you again, drug you with paralytics, and drag you out as you scream.
Operating Table---
You wake quickly, as you always do. You’re never groggy, not since you mutated. Your sleep was drug-induced, but it’s worn off by now; the paralytic drug, however, hasn’t. The anesthesiologist is good about keeping you immobile, not so much with keeping you asleep. You’re strapped to the table and you can’t move, which means you can’t move molecules, you can’t get free. They’ve got you flayed open on the table and it hurts, oh god it hurts. Your innards are there for everyone to see, but you can’t talk, you can’t scream, can’t even beg to be put back to sleep.
“There has to be some physiological difference for him to be able to withstand the pressures of moving at the speed of sound,” one of the doctors is saying as they prod around inside you. "It should crush his internals, but moving at those speeds is as natural as breathing." Every little movement of theirs hurts you. Tears spring unbidden to your eyes, roll down your face, and still no one notices. They continue to operate in the name of science.
First Kiss+++
You’re elated, high on adrenaline as you speed with Kate into the elevator. She’s beaming, breathless with excitement and looking so damn beautiful. “You're so fast-”
“Yeah.”
“I thought for sure that old lady was gonna-”
You’re both laughing, grinning, exhilerated. “Yeah.” You sound like a broken record, but you don’t care. “C’mere.” You slip close, slide your arms around her, and you kiss her. You half expect her to hit you for it, but she doesn’t, she kisses back, and you think this might be the best night of your life. The kiss is over too quickly; she pulls away when the elevator dings and opens to the Avengers’ apartment.
It’s time to find her bow. Maybe she’ll give you another kiss.
First Time (Facility)+++
You can’t believe this is happening. You’re in Kate’s white, white room, but it doesn’t seem so bad with her in it, bare and beautiful. You’re just as bare, your costume shed and kicked aside. You both fall, kissing, to the bed, and she takes control of the situation, but you don’t really mind because it’s Kate, and Kate is so damn gorgeous and warm and soft. The feel of her skin, the warmth of her breath, the curve of her lips. It’s exhilerating, the best adrenaline rush you’ve ever had. And then she straddles your hips and slides fluidly down onto you; you groan, your head tilting back with nerve-tingling pleasure.
Louieville Sluggers (Facility)---
It’s been hours, you think. Maybe days. It’s hard to tell in a dark, windowless room. You measure your time by pain, by the inches you crawl toward the door. You can’t walk anymore, you’re not sure you’ll ever walk again. Your legs drag behind you, useless, shattered, broken things. Blood seeps from wounds, and you can see bone poking out in multiple places whenever you bring yourself to look. Every inch of you is on fire, burning with pain and misery. You pressed it to save Kate, that damn red button, but you’re nowhere near her. The interns laugh at you for that. Wasted sacrifice, they tell you. Foolish. She doesn’t want your help anyway, who wants the help of an inhuman monster?
They’re back. You can see their feet as you drag yourself along the hard floor, concrete scraping your bare stomach raw. One steps on one of your hands, crunching bone beneath his heel. You bite back a scream, but you have to let it free when one of their bloody metal bats crashes into the small of your back, hard enough to shatter some vertebrae.
Wind+++
Your parents are fighting again. They always seem to do this, they have as long as you can remember in your twelve and a half years of life. It’s like they never stop fighting, and you’re sick of it, so goddamn sick of sitting upstairs and staring at the homework you don’t understand and trying not to hear the hurtful things they say about each other, about you. They’ve turned your hair white with all their fighting. It was dark brown just months ago, and now it’s like snow. You throw down your Spiderman pencil and pull on an oversized hoodie (from dad’s girlfriend that mom doesn’t know about; she’s ten years younger than mom and never gets your size and age right), and climb out the window. You’ve always been a daredevil. You leap from the roof to a tree branch and scuttle your way down as you have a million times before, and then you take off running.
You aren’t sure where you’re going to go. It doesn’t matter. The streets are empty, so you just run, and when you break out of your thoughts, you’re moving faster and fasterandfaster- Til the whole world around you is just a blur. You feel so energetic, so strong, so resilient. You feel like you can take on the world. The wind is in your hair and drying out your eyes and you justkeepmovingfaster. No one can catch you. You’re far away. When you stop, you think you’re in Kansas. You continue on to California. It takes you no time at all, and you amuse yourself by running through the shallows on a beach and kicking up sprays of water.
You don’t know what’s happened to you, but it’s hard to be afraid. The wind in your hair is the best feeling in the world.
Remorse (Facility)---
You're in your room. It's not really your room, you don't think of it as such because it's so empty and white, but it's where your button is. Kate is gone and Billy doomed her and you're falling apart. You're shaking, staring down at your hands. There's a smear of dried blood across your knuckles. Your brother's blood, and the sight of it makes your stomach knot. You hurt him. You hurt your twin brother, your only blood family left. He pleaded with you to stop but you kept hitting him.
Maybe they were right in juvie. Maybe all you're good for is being a weapon. Maybe all you're good for is destroying things.
Like your brother. Why didn't you take better care of him?
You could have stopped all of this.
Civil War---
You've gone back underground with the team, with Captain America's men. Losing their teleporters had hurt the resistance as a whole... but it's hurt you worse. They've got your brother, your twin. Wiccan is being held in that Negative Zone prison of theirs, and you have no idea if he's okay, if he's hurt, what they're doing to him.
You pace the floor of the bunker restlessly, molecules practically vibrating with energy. You want to run and save him, but you know you can't break in. The rest of the team is there, too, trading hugs with Teddy before he sets out for Arizona, to infiltrate Tony Stark's inner circle. You don't join in the tearful goodbyes.
When everyone else has left, it's just you and Teddy, and you zip over to him, your face hard, stomach knotted. You stare him in the eyes, and he meets your gaze. "Bring my brother home," you tell him.
Teddy nods.
Brothers+++
Your journey to find your mother, the Scarlet Witch, has turned up fruitless. At least you got to run halfway around the world, that’s always fun to go speeding over oceans with the wind in your hair, so that’s something, and you ended up briefly in Hell, that’s got to be a good party story. But after all that excitement, you and your twin are sitting in a middle row of a Grayhound bus, in full costume, idly discussing your adventure.
“So, if you can teleport and I have superspeed, why are we taking the bus home again?” You ask, putting on that bored and flippant tone you’re known for, but as you look over at your dark-haired mirror image, he has a laughing, sheepish smile on his face, and you can’t really say you mind this too much - extending your brotherly adventure by another hour or two. He’s your twin, after all, despite the strange circumstances of your births, and he’s been missing from your life for so long.
He never answers your question, just starts in on another topic of conversation. Maybe he noticed your absence all his life, too.
Game Night+++
Kate and Cassie are out for the evening. They’ve purposely removed themselves from the Young Avengers’ lair, and it’s really no wonder why. It’s boys’ night. All the male Young Avengers are there, Eli, Teddy, Jonas, Billy, gathered in the game room with its massive couch and widescreen TV. Eli brought the X-Box 360, Teddy the PS3, and they both brought extra controllers and armfuls of games. They’re sitting in a row on the sofa, you’re watching from the doorway, nursing a plastic red cup of Dr. Pepper from their extensive snack table. It isn’t the first game night you’ve seen, but you aren’t sure if they want you around still.
You’re new. You’re the outsider. You don’t know them as well as they know each other. It’s Kate who invited you onto the team in the first place, not Eli or your supposed brother.
They start another multiplayer brawl game. Jonas is good because he’s a machine himself, Teddy and Eli are clearly pros. Billy’s a little more uncoordinated with the controller, though.
“Chainsaw, chainsaw, chainsaw!”
“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” You hear Eli and Teddy respectively yelling at each other. Jonas is always quiet, but there’s a smile on his face. Billy is laughing.
“Where’s my guy? Hell, did I fall off again?” You turn to leave as Billy speaks. You’ve gotten your soda, you’re good for the evening. But then he turns around on the couch and calls your name, still flushed with good humor. “Tommy! Come help me out here! They’re demolishing me!”
You don’t turn to look at him right away. You take that moment to let a smile, just briefly, before that flippant, bored look is back on your face. It takes you two seconds to zip over to the couch, squeeze in between the arm of it and Billy, and snatch the controller out of his hands, fingers mashing buttons at superspeed. “Here, let me show you how it’s done, little bro.”
You and Billy win sixteen out of twenty-one rounds.
Green Feety Pajamas+++
All you can do is stare at Kate Bishop when she hands you a tissue-paper wrapped bundle. You’ve pulled off the paper, and you’re not sure what you’re staring at - a bundle of green and silver spandex, shiny and slick and sleek. On top there are a pair of orange goggles. You can see an orange triangle on the costume about where your abs would be - it’ll point right at your crotch when you’re wearing it. You look down at it, then up again at Kate’s smiling face.
“I chose you a codename, too. Speed.”
You’re speechless. Not because you’re touched at this offer to join the ‘Young Avengers’, but because... “You want me to run around wearing green spandex feety pajamas with a bright orange dick arrow on ‘em?” A grin touches your lips. “Are you hinting at something, Bishop?”
She smacks you upside the head before she leaves. You think you’re in love.
Fearless+++
You’re actually free. The entire compound is in a tizzy, bustling with panicked people running this way and that, guards and mandroids rushing toward the subject that had been broken out of his cell. You’re the subject. Doctors are fleeing. You catch up to them, of course, because no one is faster than you, they made sure of that. You slide to a stop in front of the cowards in the white coats that try to run from you, hold out your hands. They’re vibrating, blurs on the ends of your arms, and you feel the malicious glee rising up in you. “Let’s see how much I can accelerate your atomic structure before you explode, doctors!” You crow at your tormenters. They aren’t anymore, though, they are your prey.
“Down boy! Young Avengers don’t kill!” A girl’s voice yells, and then you’re flying through the air. She’s tackled you, a beautiful girl with long dark hair and purple shades at night (hella classy, you think). She’s in purple leather. Lying flat on your back in the grass, all you can do is stare up at her with the stupidest expression on your face. Green eyes meet blue and your attention is completely off the doctors. “You look just like-” She seems stunned.
“So I’ve been told. Who are you?” There isn’t any fear in those blue, blue eyes. You’re a dangerous monster, but she isn’t afraid of you.
Mirror+++
You feel it when the power dampeners on your cell go out. There’s a massive difference between being in your little hole and being out of it - you always feel tired, sluggish, slow with the dampeners on, and when they’re off, the energy buzzes in your very atoms. You feel the dampeners go out. It doesn’t take you long to vaporize the door to try and make your escape from this hell- except then you come face to face with three teenagers, about your age, a girl, a robot, and...
You find yourself staring into a mirror, almost. This boy has your face. His hair is dark and his eyes are brown, but it’s still your face.
You only mull over that for a matter of seconds before your attention is elsewhere. They’re breaking you out.
Mother--- Claimed for Kate
You’re six years old and oh so wise. You’re a big boy, but you still have nightmares every time your parents fight. They fight a lot. They fought after dinner, an argument you didn’t really understand, and you wake in the middle of the night after having the scary dream again. You don’t know what’s going on in the dream, just that it’s frightening, that there is a woman in a red cape and a man in a yellow cape who couldn’t save you and the other baby in it.
You hop out of your bed, dragging your big stuffed unicorn with you (it’s a girly toy, you know, but daddy brought it for you a few months ago, the very first time he remembered your birthday). The hall seems a lot longer in the middle of the night, and a monster could jump out of any shadow. You hug your unicorn close as you finally make it to mommy’s door and knock.
“Mommy? I had a nightmare,” you say, in a small voice. The door swings open, and your mother stares down at you.
“Again? Go back to bed, Tommy,” she replies. Mom always sounds tired and frustrated. You open your mouth to ask if you can sleep with her, but she closes the door on you and doesn’t answer your pleas.
You cry half the night, sitting in the hallway and hugging your unicorn, afraid the monster magician with the demon hands will come get you.
Explosion---
You’re thirteen. Eighth grade sucks. You’ve got a crush on the girl who sits in front of you in algebra, but she called you a creep when you wrote her a note, so you threw the note at her stupid head, and put gum in her hair the next day. Unfortunately, she knows it was you, so you find yourself in the principal’s office, fidgeting mightily in a chair. They can’t get a hold of either of your parents; dad stormed out last night and is nowhere to be found, mom is probably working. The principal has turned his distaste on you - you can see it in his eyes, in the turn of his lips.
You want to smack that smug scowl off his stupid fat face. It drives you insane when they judge you, just because your parents never come to PTA meetings or open houses, and you’re in trouble of some sort every other week. Your grades aren’t great because it’s hard to pay attention. It feels like you’ve been in a constant state of restlessness since you were twelve.
He starts yelling at you about all the trouble you cause. You’re angry, you want to leave, you want to run, you want to gogogo- Your squirming is getting worse. The principal calls you out on it, tells you to sit still for once, but you’re practically vibrating. Everything around you is practically vibrating, and the principal takes notice.
You feel a sick sense of satisfaction at his fear. Your eyes are alight. Everything vibrates around you faster and faster andfasterandfaster-
The next thing you know, you’re being pulled out of the demolished rubble of your school amidst news crews and frightened onlookers. You’re half-conscious, but you grin anyway. Let them judge you now.
Mutation---
Your parents are with you. You’re in a cold white doctor’s office, wearing a prison jumpsuit, sitting on top of the chilly table. Your feet are cuffed together, but they’ve removed your handcuffs for the physical examination. Dad is holding mom, for the first time that you can remember. They look scared. The two guards at the door look bored. You look dull and tired and flat. You’re thirteen, and everyone is preparing for your court trial. An examination is part of that, your lawyer says. If they can prove there’s something wrong with you, he can get you off on probation, maybe. Juvie, at the worst.
They’ve got an expert examining you. You hate the poking and prodding and constant questions, but you suffer through it.
“Mr. and Mrs. Shepherd,” he says solemnly, the papers from your bloodwork in his hands. “I’m afraid your son is a mutant.”
Your mother bursts into tears. Your father’s expression tightens as he looks at you, and you see the revulsion.
You can only shrug.
Abandonment---
They only let you see your mother through thick plexiglass, with full power-dampener cuffs around your wrists. You can hardly move your arms. Your hands are enclosed inside so tight you can hardly feel your fingers. You focus on that, on your hands in your lap, instead of your mother’s tear-stained face on the other side of the plexiglass. “You-... Please, mom, you’ve got to... I don’t know, you’ve got to get me out of here.” You’re talking lowly because it frightens her when you raise your voice. “It’s awful, mom-”
“I can’t, Thomas,” she tells you in a quavering voice as she stands, gathering up her purse.
It’s the last time you ever see her. Dad stopped coming a long time ago. The doctors can do whatever they want to you now.
Don’t Stop Running--- Claimed for Billy
They never take you anywhere without power dampener cuffs on. Today is no different, but they shove you into a large room, about the size of a football stadium, with a track. The walls are covered in wires and cameras and sensors. Once the heavy metal doors are shut behind you, the cuffs drop off your hands and feet automatically. They’ve already covered you in small sensors, read-out devices for gathering data. You aren’t wearing any shoes, and the asphalt is rough under your feet.
There’s a large pane of glass, high up on one of the walls. You can see the doctors watching you through it. “Don’t try to blow yourself an escape route. The doors are guarded and your powers will only work inside that room,” they say. You give them the dirtiest look you can manage. You don’t move.
“Run.” Another one says. “Run, or you’re going to wish you had. Run and don’t stop until we’ve gathered all the data we need.”
You know better than to disobey, so you run circles around the room. But you don’t run as fast as you can - your legs hurt. The muscles ache to the bone, the incisions from where they cut into you to see the muscle formation in your calves and thighs tug and pull and burn.
Panels in the walls open up, all around you. “We know you can do better than that. Run.” Guns slide out of the walls. “Run as fast as you can, and don’t stop.”
Suddenly you’re trapped in a rain of bullets from every side. Your eyes widen, your heart nearly stops. Adrenline pumps through your veins and you run, god do you run, faster than you ever have in your fourteen years of life. You’re so fast you can weave around bullets, though every moment of it hurts. A bullet pierces your calf, and you cry out and collapse, covering your head with your hands and trying not to cry. You’re going to die, they’re going to kill you-- but then the rain of gunfire ceases. Armored and armed guards burst into the room to restrain you. You struggle, but you’re shaking too badly and in too much pain to do much. You could blow them up, but you can’t make the molecules move right, you can’t concentrate. They cuff you again, drug you with paralytics, and drag you out as you scream.
Operating Table---
You wake quickly, as you always do. You’re never groggy, not since you mutated. Your sleep was drug-induced, but it’s worn off by now; the paralytic drug, however, hasn’t. The anesthesiologist is good about keeping you immobile, not so much with keeping you asleep. You’re strapped to the table and you can’t move, which means you can’t move molecules, you can’t get free. They’ve got you flayed open on the table and it hurts, oh god it hurts. Your innards are there for everyone to see, but you can’t talk, you can’t scream, can’t even beg to be put back to sleep.
“There has to be some physiological difference for him to be able to withstand the pressures of moving at the speed of sound,” one of the doctors is saying as they prod around inside you. "It should crush his internals, but moving at those speeds is as natural as breathing." Every little movement of theirs hurts you. Tears spring unbidden to your eyes, roll down your face, and still no one notices. They continue to operate in the name of science.
First Kiss+++
You’re elated, high on adrenaline as you speed with Kate into the elevator. She’s beaming, breathless with excitement and looking so damn beautiful. “You're so fast-”
“Yeah.”
“I thought for sure that old lady was gonna-”
You’re both laughing, grinning, exhilerated. “Yeah.” You sound like a broken record, but you don’t care. “C’mere.” You slip close, slide your arms around her, and you kiss her. You half expect her to hit you for it, but she doesn’t, she kisses back, and you think this might be the best night of your life. The kiss is over too quickly; she pulls away when the elevator dings and opens to the Avengers’ apartment.
It’s time to find her bow. Maybe she’ll give you another kiss.
First Time (Facility)+++
You can’t believe this is happening. You’re in Kate’s white, white room, but it doesn’t seem so bad with her in it, bare and beautiful. You’re just as bare, your costume shed and kicked aside. You both fall, kissing, to the bed, and she takes control of the situation, but you don’t really mind because it’s Kate, and Kate is so damn gorgeous and warm and soft. The feel of her skin, the warmth of her breath, the curve of her lips. It’s exhilerating, the best adrenaline rush you’ve ever had. And then she straddles your hips and slides fluidly down onto you; you groan, your head tilting back with nerve-tingling pleasure.
Louieville Sluggers (Facility)---
It’s been hours, you think. Maybe days. It’s hard to tell in a dark, windowless room. You measure your time by pain, by the inches you crawl toward the door. You can’t walk anymore, you’re not sure you’ll ever walk again. Your legs drag behind you, useless, shattered, broken things. Blood seeps from wounds, and you can see bone poking out in multiple places whenever you bring yourself to look. Every inch of you is on fire, burning with pain and misery. You pressed it to save Kate, that damn red button, but you’re nowhere near her. The interns laugh at you for that. Wasted sacrifice, they tell you. Foolish. She doesn’t want your help anyway, who wants the help of an inhuman monster?
They’re back. You can see their feet as you drag yourself along the hard floor, concrete scraping your bare stomach raw. One steps on one of your hands, crunching bone beneath his heel. You bite back a scream, but you have to let it free when one of their bloody metal bats crashes into the small of your back, hard enough to shatter some vertebrae.
Wind+++
Your parents are fighting again. They always seem to do this, they have as long as you can remember in your twelve and a half years of life. It’s like they never stop fighting, and you’re sick of it, so goddamn sick of sitting upstairs and staring at the homework you don’t understand and trying not to hear the hurtful things they say about each other, about you. They’ve turned your hair white with all their fighting. It was dark brown just months ago, and now it’s like snow. You throw down your Spiderman pencil and pull on an oversized hoodie (from dad’s girlfriend that mom doesn’t know about; she’s ten years younger than mom and never gets your size and age right), and climb out the window. You’ve always been a daredevil. You leap from the roof to a tree branch and scuttle your way down as you have a million times before, and then you take off running.
You aren’t sure where you’re going to go. It doesn’t matter. The streets are empty, so you just run, and when you break out of your thoughts, you’re moving faster and fasterandfaster- Til the whole world around you is just a blur. You feel so energetic, so strong, so resilient. You feel like you can take on the world. The wind is in your hair and drying out your eyes and you justkeepmovingfaster. No one can catch you. You’re far away. When you stop, you think you’re in Kansas. You continue on to California. It takes you no time at all, and you amuse yourself by running through the shallows on a beach and kicking up sprays of water.
You don’t know what’s happened to you, but it’s hard to be afraid. The wind in your hair is the best feeling in the world.
Remorse (Facility)---
You're in your room. It's not really your room, you don't think of it as such because it's so empty and white, but it's where your button is. Kate is gone and Billy doomed her and you're falling apart. You're shaking, staring down at your hands. There's a smear of dried blood across your knuckles. Your brother's blood, and the sight of it makes your stomach knot. You hurt him. You hurt your twin brother, your only blood family left. He pleaded with you to stop but you kept hitting him.
Maybe they were right in juvie. Maybe all you're good for is being a weapon. Maybe all you're good for is destroying things.
Like your brother. Why didn't you take better care of him?
You could have stopped all of this.
Civil War---
You've gone back underground with the team, with Captain America's men. Losing their teleporters had hurt the resistance as a whole... but it's hurt you worse. They've got your brother, your twin. Wiccan is being held in that Negative Zone prison of theirs, and you have no idea if he's okay, if he's hurt, what they're doing to him.
You pace the floor of the bunker restlessly, molecules practically vibrating with energy. You want to run and save him, but you know you can't break in. The rest of the team is there, too, trading hugs with Teddy before he sets out for Arizona, to infiltrate Tony Stark's inner circle. You don't join in the tearful goodbyes.
When everyone else has left, it's just you and Teddy, and you zip over to him, your face hard, stomach knotted. You stare him in the eyes, and he meets your gaze. "Bring my brother home," you tell him.
Teddy nods.