Monster

Chapter 3: The Hidden Reports

"Shit, Y/n. That's some pretty weird dreams." Natasha let out a long sigh alongside her words, the tiny smile making the statement lose the wariness it could've held.

"That's what I've been saying. I have no clue as to why my mind has decided to torment me with these 'flashbacks.' If I didn't know better, I would say I had a secret life," you said laughing a little. It all just seemed stupid to you now. It was probably from stress and from watching TV.

Natasha laughed lightly, and unbeknownst to you, a worried looked crossed her face so fast, the first sign of the crack of a long-held memory. She cleared her throat and said, "all this crazy talk made me hungry. How about we order some food and watch a movie?"

"Sure, that sounds great."

°°°°°

Two slow months had gone by since the first dream, and you still had nightmares alike the first one. You would always wake up in the middle of the night sweating and/or screaming. Sometimes they would feel too personal to even think of sharing them, and he seem to always be present. There were others where the man you kept on calling 'papa' would appear to be there telling important things, commanding people; he was important and so were you. Since the dreams/nightmares had started, you had changed. You knew it, and the rest of the team had noticed a difference in your behavior too. You were always tired, you never went out with them anymore, everything was just work—and the dreams. Natasha and Clint were always there for you, they reminded you—all the time—to eat, train, and sleep. You were thankful because without them, you would have died from starvation and the lack of sleep long ago. They worried too much, though. Everyone else worried, but they seemed almost scared that you kept so much time in your mind these days, but you always told yourself they were just being great friends. That must be it.

When morning came once more, you decided to work some extra hours. Although, Nat tried to get you out of there, it didn't work. You were still tracking Barnes down, and it kept on looking like an impossible task. You were staring at the screen, with no coordinates that could locate him. Then, like some lightbulb being switch on, your mind went wild. You started typing fast, looking for something that was bound to help. How didn't it occur to you to look for his reports? You were going to see how he moved, his patterns from the very beginning, you thought it was genius—analyze the guy. You read his report with caution, trying to absorb everything. There were extensions from his report, and you saw a name that seemed familiar to you. You looked the name up: John Garrett. His report was top classified, even for your level. That made you all the more curious to know who he was, but you couldn't access to his report the normal way. There is only one way around this, you thought. You were going to hack S.H.I.E.L.D, again.

After five minutes of typing like a maniac, you were finally able to read all reports, even the ones higher than the one you were looking for. Once you opened it, you let out a loud gasp. A picture of a man covered most of your screen, papa. That was the man you had been calling papa in all your dreams. He was dead. He had been a double agent, working for both HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D—the latter not knowing about it before prior his death. He used to be one of S.H.I.E.L.D's best agents along with Agent Coulson. How come that after all the time you were working here, you had never crossed paths before, if they had just found out about him 2 years ago. There wasn't much information about him and his HYDRA work. He died before they could interrogate him.

You spent the rest of the night reading reports after reports, all involving HYDRA. Yours was under the filtered search, but you didn't look at it given that you had a couple shared reports that involved the group but only because of data coding and the mission with Natasha. It didn't make sense to you that the man you had been calling 'papa' in your dreams had been part of both groups, but what made you hammer away at your brain was his connection to you. You had never seen him before the dreams, and now the reports said he had worked with the same people you did. You went through every report that seemed relevant to what you were looking for, all under the filtered search.

You were approaching the end of the results, and you were a tad glad, drowsiness slowly overcoming you. Finally, there was only one more to read. Suddenly, your drowsiness vanished. The report was dated around a month before S.H.I.E.L.D had gone out of their way to recruit you. You didn't know what to expect, but for some reason, your heart was beating a little faster than usual. When you opened it, there were two names that caught your attention, Black Widow and Hawkeye. They had been given the whatever mission this report was soon to tell you. Your breath hitched at the words under the 'Objective' box. It clearly read, "Y/n L/n. Bring target in."

You read the report, absorbing every word written on it. Trying to process their meaning. It had been a previous mission that had end up in your 'finding,' and this mission was created to bring you in and question you. It didn't hold much information as to why you were there, or how you had ended there in the first place. Having no recollection of such happenings, besides newfound dreams, it was making you angsty. It didn't make any sense, no matter how many times you read the report. You were recruited a month after this supposed mission, and you couldn't shake the feeling that this meant bad things. You gave a frustrated noise; you were soon to fry your brain with how much thinking you were doing. You grabbed a folder and printed every report that seemed relevant to you, from profiles to mission reports. You had so many questions, so many theories, so many doubts, and you needed answers.

You logged out of the computer, and cautiously retreated to your quarters. You were going to find out what all of this meant, you needed clarifications, and you needed them soon.