"The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential... these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence."
Confucius
1942
She was young, she felt hollow. It felt as though her brain were being ripped apart from inside of her, and yet no one came when she screamed. Her shrieks filled the walls of the Siberian base, there was no possible way she was not being heard.
The thin, frail brunette was given her first dose of the Super Soldier serum earlier that month, though it was not the same as what Steve Rogers had gotten. It did not enlarge her muscles, it did not give her the ability to outrun a car at top speed. Instead, it seeped into her veins, tainting them and responding unexpectedly with the other serums, formula's, and whatever else was inside of her. Her ability to heal increased as the tests had shown; constant abrasions made to her body while someone timed just how long it took her to recover. And that was the most bearable of the torture.
"Please!" she shrieked from her closed cell, knowing that people could hear her, but no one cared. All she knew were these walls, all she knew were the blank stares of the doctors that tested on her, all she knew was the pain inside of her head was becoming unbearable. Previously she believed it was a side effect of the Super Soldier serum that they had given her, as it had begun to arise then. But when it persisted, she believed that she was dying. All she wanted was to stop the pain, to have her Rapture and forget about it all.
All her screaming was for naught, as no one came to check on her. After days of this, her breathing became ragged, her lungs were no longer filling with the required amount of air to survive. Her head throbbed and suddenly her vision was blurred around the edges, focusing in on the handle of her cell door. A handle that rarely turned, a handle that led to an outside she rarely got to see. Her knees gave in and her legs crumpled from underneath her, her head hit the metal bar at the end of her small, uncomfortable bed.
In a panicked daze, Ophelia found herself on the floor, her head upon the cold concrete, her eyes only able to focus on the door. No sound came from her lips, even though they were moving and her lungs felt as though she were screaming. After what felt like hours, an amount of time Ophelia didn't truly know, the door scraped over the concrete, and two pairs of legs appeared in her vision. Boot clad, thick cargo-green pants.
One of them crouched down and flipped her so that he could see her face; once he had confirmed she was breathing and still alive, he stepped back and spoke to his comrade. After some discussion that Ophelia couldn't process, she could feel the warmth of the two men, hear their heartbeats and their lungs expanding and they inhaled. Disgust; that was the emotion that Ophelia could taste upon her tongue, feel throbbing in her head. Another seeped in like poison, this one was suffering. She clutched her head and screamed, and that was the last thing she remembered.
A swirl of bright red filled her dream; not like blood, but energy. It wrapped its smoky fingers around the edges of her mind, and she could feel it digging. She could feel it blocking her memories, or so she thought; as the redness began to open up, there were flashes of those two guards in pain, clutching their heads, but it faded. There was no explanation for what she was seeing, there was no reasoning behind this memory or dream, only that it was happening. Nothing seemed to make sense, and the red smoke consumed her thoughts, only to open up like clouds clearing after a storm.
A young HYDRA doctor, though Ophelia wondered about his credibility, had her sitting on the gurney after her last screaming fit had ended in a panic attack that left her unable to speak for two days. He flashed a light into her eyes to see if she would respond; her pupils responded quickly. Her tongue felt numb, but she was beginning to form words once again. She lolled her head to the side, wishing that there was something more to her life than all this, but not knowing what else was out there.
"Do you remember anything that happened two days ago in your cell?" The doctor asked her.
She shook her head, forcing her tongue to move. "N-no."
"The two guards that found you, they are not in a very good state right now," he explained.
"Wha..." she grimaced, "what h-happened?"
"We are not sure." His words held a heavy weight, Ophelia knew that she had done something, but she couldn't even remember what she had done. That meant more tests. "We need to run a few tests, you may have more abilities than we know."
She shook her head. "Please, no."
A flash of a familiar face crossed her mind; a woman with a round face, large green eyes. Her long brown hair twisted around her shoulders and wrapped around her body. Her eyes closed and she looked serene, as though she were sleeping. Words filled Ophelia's head, but she couldn't hear what they were saying to her, as though she were underwater and the words were mumbled. She longed to hear what was being said, as if it were the key to unlock her own mind.
The next thing she remembered, she was in a room filled with people staring at her. Clipboards and pens, their eyes focused on the writing before them, a few of them glancing up at Ophelia. That same doctor stood before her. "Try to do what you did the other week."
"I don't know what I did." She pleaded, "Please... Just..."
"You are only worth what you can do for HYDRA." He sighed. "If you cannot do this now, we will have to put you back under extreme stress to trigger what you have done."
"What did I do!?" She screamed at him.
"Those two guards claimed you brought forth- -"
Her memory glitched like a computer, and reconnected to later events.
Everyone who had been standing before her, the doctor, the men and women with clipboards studying her, the guards standing at the doors- they were all on their knees clutching their heads. Their faces contorted in pain and agony, as if their brains were being eaten from the inside. Some shouted in pain, some writhed on the floor, and some stared at Ophelia with pleading eyes. For the first time, Ophelia felt a power rush through her. She had control, she was the only one standing in a room full of people who looked down at her like dirt. Though she did not know what she was doing, she felt an incredible amount of excitement flow through her.
And then it was gone.
Something else began to fill her head, as if it was replacing her memories where they fell short. The redness came once again, twisting like it was a living creature inside of her mind, trying to fill in the blanks but being unable to do so. Then it all began to fade, the colour of the smoke turning to a soft pink as if someone had doused it with white paint. Ophelia wanted to call out to it, she did not want it to leave because it felt familiar, it felt friendly. But slowly the pink turned to white, and the white wisped away like smoke from a candle that had just been blown out.
Ophelia woke in the crammed car, Bucky beside her, Sam and Steve in the front chatting away. Her heart was hammering like a rabbits, but she maintained an expression as though she had simply woken up from a nice, well needed nap.
Below that exterior she felt as though her head was about to explode. She had thought she remembered everything from her past, having access to her own mind in full, she didn't think that there were still big events in her life that would come back to her, and she began to wonder if what she had just seen was fiction. Her mind creating events to startle her, but in the back of her mind it felt too real to question. There were parts of it she didn't remember too, parts that her mind refused to reach.
Then she remembered what the doctor in Berlin had said, that she had not yet reached her full potential. A twisted feeling in her stomach made her want to step out of the car and throw up, but she simply shifted so that she was sitting upright, and turned her head away from Bucky. She didn't need him worrying about her more than he already was, and so she decided it was best to keep this to herself.
She knew, from the memory, that it was before she had met Bucky. Most of her life before Bucky was the same thing over and over again, but this was different. Her hands clutched at her thighs, nails trying to dig through the fabric of her pants, she wanted to erase that memory because she was scared of what she might be able to do.
The panic attack was more than what it seemed, the way she could feel everything in ways she couldn't explain. She wondered if maybe, just maybe, she was greater than HYDRA had led her to believe, that maybe she had some power growing inside of her that they were afraid of, and so they made her forget.
She let that thought sink in, wishing so badly that she could open up her brain, displaying it out in front of her so that she might dissect it. On top of not knowing who she really was, she was slowly learning that there were many versions of herself. The version of herself before Bucky, who suffered greatly without any hope that she would survive each day. The version that knew she had to survive because of Bucky, the one that realized she had something to fight for. The version of her that learned compassion and love, that learned how to bring someone back from the abyss.
But now there was another version creeping in, and it excited Ophelia.