OLD MAN | stark

thirty

porcelain

"None of what he has done can be forgiven."

HYDRA Facility - January 2016

And then she woke.

It was like rising out of a thrashing, ice-cold ocean that had filled her lungs with water and salt, and into an air that was on fire.

Christa was panting, eyes burning with the need to blink, staring out at a screen of swirling blues and purples and whites once more.

And all the pain came back again--but this time, it wasn't just in her mind, not just part of a hazed mixture of images and neurons firing at her as they'd been told to by whatever Jin had plunged into her bloodstream. She thought she saw a hint of her reflection in the screen before her--and it was somebody she didn't recognize. It was bloody. Bruised. Face a painting of blues and greens and purples, eyes bloodshot, arms dripping red so much she thought she might be sick. The stench of metal was overwhelming.

Her mouth opened in a silent scream, and she panted, hair sticking to the sides of her face in a mixture of sweat and blood. It took her a moment to be able to let any noise out, and after that she threw up.

Her throat burned with acid. That was all that came up. She hadn't eaten in days.

The smell was still unbearable.

"Hurts, doesn't it?"

Her eyelids were released, and Christa shut her eyes, squeezing them tightly. They burned horribly. She couldn't look at the woman.

"I feel it too. Every day."

Christa heard footsteps, and wished, wished so desperately, that she'd never been given the things in her ears.

"And the only people who are to blame are the Starks."

Breathing decelerating, heartbeat lowering, Christa opened her eyes to see Jin standing less than a foot away from her.

She stayed silent.

"Howard Stark. Genius. Wealthy. Godlike in his power. People revered him. They loved him. They should have feared him."

Christa stared at the woman, expression unmoving, hollow brown eyes staring into Jin's drowning black ones.

"My family was murdered by his people. You know what that's like. You know the pain of losing a parent. You know the pain of never knowing one. My father and brother were murdered by his people, my home attacked without a second thought simply because they'd discovered my brother worked for HYDRA. Each were shot so many times even my mother wouldn't have been able to recognize them. My mother fell into a coma soon after she saved me from the attack. I was a baby. She died two years later. I never knew them, but I knew what they did. Their loss from the world has been seen for decades. Their work was never completed. I saw their pictures. I saw their names. But I never knew them.