❝ LADY LUCK! ❞ → MARVEL

- PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE

→ ❝ march, nineteen-forty-one! ❞

          Irene O'Connor had never been in a laboratory before, but she was sure this isn't what one was supposed to look like, and due to that doubt, she was unsure whether what she was becoming a part of was truly as good as she had been promised. She had only been approached twenty-two hours ago about being a part of the experiment, after a certain group of people caught wind of her extremely lucky tendencies, and something just wasn't sitting well with her. Feeling awfully uncomfortable and out of place, she sat partially hidden by a bench of buttons and knobs and levers that she didn't know the function of and refrained from biting her red polished nails by tapping her foot frantically on the floor. A German man (whom she had forgotten the name of) was talking in a much too scientific way for her liking; none of the sentences made sense to her, they were merely a jumble of words.

          "You'll drill a hole into the floor if you're not careful, ma'am," a dark haired man with a moustache nodded towards her brown oxfords which made no effort to slow down. He couldn't have been more than a year or two older than herself, and his voice was low, as if not to draw attention away from the German scientist and onto himself in the otherwise quiet room. Something, however, told Irene that he wasn't usually a man to shy away from attention.

          Briefly making eye contact with him, she anxiously bit her lip and moved her gaze back down, picking at the hem of her green flowered dress, "I'm just scared it isn't going to work, Mr Stark," she shook her head and furrowed her eyebrows. "If it doesn't work I- I don't want the weight of it on my shoulders. That poor, poor man-" she nodded to the scrawny blonde who was strapped to a table in the middle of the room. Irene wasn't sure exactly what the procedure entailed, but she couldn't help wondering if they had really picked the right man for the role. Various nurses were treating him as if he was no more than a doll (a china doll, Irene imagines, as he was so frail and dainty looking), pricking him and prepping him for whatever was about to happen.

          Howard Stark encompassed her petite hands in his larger ones, stilling her shaking fingers and cutting her off mid-sentence. Fear swirled in her irises as she looked up at him to hear what he had to say. "Miss O'Connor, you have absolutely nothing to fear. I won't lie to you, it will hurt Mr Rogers for a brief moment," Irene cringed at the thought of the stranger being in pain, "But he will be all the better for it. You're doing a great, great thing, Miss O'Connor."

          "I sure hope so," Irene sighed.

          "Come over here with me," Howard motioned to another bench of strange levers, before quickly adding, "If you don't want to be alone, I mean. I understand how scared you must be."

          Irene blushed at his kind gesture (nobody in the room yet had shown her any attention, aside from a single, brief "hello, ma'am" at the door) and stood up as the German doctor began to count down from five. Strangely, all it reminded Irene of was a ticking bomb, keeping perfect time until pandemonium erupted. Panic consumed her fragile mind once again. Involuntarily, she squeezed Howard's hand (who she was sure squeezed comfortingly back) and they walked over to the bench at a brisk pace.

          As the scientist (who Howard politely reminded her was named Erskine) hit one, Irene found her gaze wandering to the table in the middle of the room. She felt an overwhelming urge to drink the blue liquid that was flowing from half a dozen vials into Mr. Roger's bloodstream and wondered what exactly the potions were doing. All seemed well, but before Irene could even think about taking a second to relax her racing thoughts and tense muscles, Mr. Rogers was staring into her eyes, his face contorted with discomfort. Irene guiltily bit her lip and averted her gaze.