❝MR. STARK, THERE'S SOMEONE HERE TO SEE YOU.❞
❝WHO THE HELL IS IT?❞
❝WELL, SIR, SHE SEEMS TO THINK SHE'S YOUR DAUGHTER.❞
❝CHRIST.❞
❝ACTUALLY, IT'S CHRISTA.❞
POST- AVENGERS: AGE of ULTRON; PRE- CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR
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"Welcome to the birthplace of hope."
Hydra Facility - January 12th, 2016
"STOP! Please--go get Pepper! Restart her heart! Please! I--I'll do anything--ANYTHING!"
Christa was kicking and screaming as hard as she could muster. When her already fiery, bullet-wounded shoulder violently hit one of her captors, she screamed out even louder. The image of Pepper lying there in that room in the darkness, red hair scattered around her head, was ingrained in her head like an ultraviolet light.
Left behind, supposed to be saved in Christa's place after a desperate attempt at escape. Only there because they had wanted Christa, and the only way to get to her was through someone close to her.
Someone close to her.
She strained against the HYDRA agents whose grips would not loosen, managing at moments to throw them off balance only for a moment at a time. They pulled her down the dark, narrow, dimly-lit hallway, the gloved woman less than a foot ahead of them, eyes ahead of herself but ears everpresent on the commotion.
"Take out the hearing devices," came the woman's voice from completely out of nowhere, catching Christa's attention more than most sentences would right now.
Panic shot through her as though she had swallowed a cube of ice. "NO!" she screamed, and went to hit the man whose arm was now reaching out to remove the hearing enhancers from her ears, but a rock-like hand closed around her wrist, making it impossible to move it even a centimeter. Mind going a million miles a minute, Christa lowered her head as the hand came closer to it and sank her teeth into it. She'd already been separated from Pepper in this hell hole--she wasn't losing her hearing again too.
In a moment not even Christa could have seen coming, as the man howled in pain, the gloved woman flipped around, pulled Christa's now freed arm into a locked and rather painful position, and ripped the hearing enhancers straight out of the girl's ears. It felt like a knife had just sliced through them, and she wanted to scream but the pain was so much that she couldn't. She tried, but, unable to breathe in that horrid moment, she couldn't scream.
And, like the day of the explosion--the day that everything went wrong-- the world went silent.
The woman pulled her hand back and stuffed the hearing enhancers in her pockets, not looking at Christa's figure, which was now hunched over, the only things preventing her from falling on the ground being the two HYDRA agents who now had much firmer grips on her. Then, face still frozen in a surprisingly inexpressive way, she ripped off one of her gloves and shoved it in a pocket with the hearing enhancers. In one swift movement, she grabbed Christa's face in the palm of her hand and held it there, cradled it almost.
The fire that started on Christa's cheek was indescribable.
It was searing. It was like dry ice. It was like a puddle of acid had just been thrown at her face and was being pressed into it by coals who had been home to a fire no more than a second ago.
