happier // avengers au

foreword + extended summary

Anastasia Vera Martin lost her father when she was three years old. She lost her mother when she was four, and now it feels likes she's lost everything but her own life. And even that can hardly be considered a life, trapped inside the stone walls of a HYDRA facility in Russia.

She's not the only one trapped behind steel doors at night. HYDRA has decided that starting them young is the new way to train highly efficient, moldable soldiers to bolster their ranks, especially after the tragedy at the Triskellion and the loss of their most useful asset, the Winter Soldier.

Anastasia was never meant to be experimented on, neither were the other nine children in her hall, but once the facility got their hands on an otherworldly silver stick with a blue gem at the end, they couldn't help themselves.

Mostly, their experiments failed. Whether it was that they were experimenting on children, that they really had no grasp on what the staff itself could do, or that some people simply are not compatible with alien technology, they do not know. They hardly cared. There are many children in the world, surely they can find replacements for the ones that died or had their minds boggled so badly that they had to be killed off.

When an alarm goes off one night and Anastasia is swept away in a whirlwind of red, white, and blue, it could mean a new start for her. But it also could mean danger, and all she knows is the inside of those unforgiving stone walls.

Maybe the only person who can save her is the one who escaped from similar walls merely a year prior.

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Welcome readers!

Quick note for future reference, ANY ITALICIZED SPEECH IS SPOKEN IN RUSSIAN. That extends throughout the entire story, though more in the beginning than the end. I have, in the past, just tried to write them out in the language itself, but the captions interrupted the flow of my story and were honestly taxing to read.

HOWEVER, there may be a word or two here and then in actual Russian; that will be an isolated one or two words in a sentence (a petname etc.) that is otherwise made up of English words.

ALSO OF NOTE, this is an AU. I know that some of the details mess up the canon storyline. I know that some of the characters may act a little OOC. This is my alternate universe in which to house my original characters within my altered MCU, and therefore only the plot line and any names you do not recognize belong to me. An AU is still a fanfiction.

Also, don't be afraid to point out any spelling or grammar mistakes in the comments (I mean don't be mean about it, but you know) because I'm not quite used to my new phone keyboard yet!

Thanks, and happy reading!