To The Moon and Back (A Marvel Fanfiction)

#10 Fear and Flashbacks

I walk into the Avengers compound, my heart beating hard in my chest.

I see visions of teeth in my face, needles in my arm, dead rabbits and dead horses that we feast on as we are starved for days and then trained to hunt. I have hidden my wings for so long, but now they come out of my back, the razor sharp tips on the very end cutting perfect slices along the back of my shirt.

Why are these feelings building up inside of me? What if everything's a trick, a sick game, a test? What if one by one they give up on me like Natasha did and turn me over to the US government? What if they die like Vulcan? What if they betray me like my father?

A vivid memory overtakes me at that thought.

I'm seven.

"Papa, they're hurting me!" I yell shrilly.

"Quiet down!" Says the scientist who is inserting needles into my wings. I feel each and every one of them.

"Make then stop!" I yell.

"PAPA!"

My father stands nearby, watching.

"Halt!" He yells.

I breathe a sigh of relief.

He approaches me and I reach out to him but he ignores me and moves behind me.

"This one." I feel a needle being pulled out of me as my father speaks... "Goes in here." ...only to be stabbed back in another place.

I scream again.

I shake my head, snapping out of it. I look down at my hands and they're shaking.

"Snap out of it, snap out of it." I hiss under my breath. I continue my walk, down the stairs. Of course it would be in the basement. I get to the bottom floor and look at the signs on the wall.

"Tony's Lab ⬇️" there's an elevator with buttons. I do not do elevators. I blink and I'm back in the Lab in Russia.

I'm nine. They pull me into an elevator. Yes, they pull me. They have to yank me and kick at me because I just will not enter the elevator. Finally they get me in, and it's crowded and trapped. I lay down and start to sweat, Zelda looks at me disapprovingly. I get scared, I just can't help it so I bring my hands together, pull them apart and BOOM! An explosion of energy releases from my body. The elevator starts to freefall. I start to panic, trying to stop it with my energy. Zelda waves a hand from where she was knocked down and plants begin to shoot up into the elevator from all sides. Suddenly there is a jolt, and then we're suspended. We hang in the air, we're alive. That elevator remains charred for the remainder of my stay at the lab. I see it sometimes when I pass. But never again do they make me enter.

I look around for stairs. I find a door, so I peek in and sure enough, there they are. I descend, still full of the feeling that someone's watching and following me. I curl up on one of the landings. I put my hands over my ears and bury my head in my hands.

I'm eleven. Every bone in my body aches. I'm so...hungry. But I've gotten past the point of sharp pain. I'm kind of used to it. It's just the tiredness that comes along with it that is making me mad. I've been trapped in my cage for three days with no food in my wolf form. Vulcan is in the same boat. He lies in the next cage over miserably. In fact, many of the wolves in the room have not been fed. They snarl and growl at one another and snap at the hands who bring them water.

"What's going on?"

"Where's our food?"

"This is the end!"

"Open your eyes, they're trying to kill us!"

I lie down, my wings folding over my back on either side of my body. The poke out of the sides of the cage and hand limply. Suddenly, many of the handler and field scientists enter the room. They have their electric sticks and leashes.