The next time Eloise wakes up, Bruce isn't in the room. In his place are the two idiots that she planned to save the world with.
When Eloise comes to, she doesn't move and just keeps her eyes closed for a while, listening to Peter and Ned's conversation. Their voices are hushed as they exchange words.
"May's going nuts," Peter says. "She keeps texting me and calling me, even though I was just home yesterday. I understand that I was gone for a couple days and she'd like to spend some time with me now, but it's not like I'm never coming home again."
Eloise hears Ned reply. "Yeah, my parents aren't liking how I'm not at home having our mandatory Friday night family dinner."
"How'd you get out of it?"
"I told them that I had a project to work on, but they told me that I could work on it tomorrow, so I just snuck out the back door."
There's a lull in the conversation, so Eloise decides to let the boys know she's awake.
Slowly, her eyelids part. Eloise looks down at her body and realizes that there's now a light blanket covering her. With caution, she moves so that she's not in a ball anymore and lies back on her back. The movements cause dull pains and her sore muscles to strain, but other than that, she's okay.
There's shuffling from the other side of the room and footsteps approach.
"Hey, El," Peter says softly.
Eloise turns her head with a small smile of relief at his voice, but as soon as he comes into view, the smile is immediately wiped off her face.
Although he's also smiling, along with Ned beside him, his appearance causes Eloise to gasp. There are dark bruises on his neck like someone tried to choke him, a few cuts on his face, a busted lip, and dark bruises all over him. He's got a painful-looking black eye that swells his left eye and the skin around it, causing his eyelids unable to open all the way. His nose looks crooked and is bruised, too. Dark purple and red splash his jaw bones.
Eloise quickly scans Ned's face next, dread filling her as she prays he isn't as damaged. Luckily, it isn't as bad as Peter's, but his arm is in a sling and he has a healing cut above his left eyebrow. Eloise's hand covers her mouth.
"Oh my gosh, what happened?" She asks. "Are you guys okay? What happened to your face, Peter? And your arm, Ned?" Her voice drips of concern as questions spew from her mouth.
Ned and Peter look at each other with a knowing look. Neither answers her questions.
"How are you feeling?" Ned asks instead.
Worry rises in Eloise's throat. "I'm fine, but who banged you guys up?" Her voice cracks at the end.
They exchange another look.
Peter looks down at his feet. Quietly, he whispers, "You did."
Eloise freezes. She would've laughed if there was humor laced in his tone, but there wasn't. Ned and Peter don't make eye-contact with Eloise and shuffle on their feet with pained expressions.
Then it dawns on her: he's serious. Eloise did that to his face, and broke Ned's arm.
Horror wracks through her body. "What?" Eloise croaks, her throat closing up as she feels tears spring up to her eyes. She thinks she's going to be sick.
Peter's eyes dart up and meet Eloise's, but he quickly looks away.
"It's okay," He says. "I'm okay, Ned is okay, Bruce and Mr. Stark and Bucky and Steve are okay."
Her breath catches at all of the names. A tear slips down her cheek, but Eloise doesn't bother wiping it away.
She hurt Peter, Ned, Tony, Bruce, Bucky, and Steve? Did she hurt anyone else? How did she hurt them, why did she hurt them, and why can't she remember?
Eloise looks down at her shaking hands in utter horror of what she's done.
"I'm a monster." Her voice is so quiet she's surprised Peter catches it.
"No, gosh no you're not a—"
"Yes I am!" Eloise sobs, eyes darting between Ned and Peter. Both look torn at the sight of how broken she is. Just the sight of Ned's broken arm and Peter's badly bruised face makes Eloise want to vomit. "I hurt you guys!"
"You didn't know what you were doing," Ned shoots back in a begging tone, wanting her to believe him. But looking at the two of them, she know what he's saying about her isn't true. "You really aren't a monster. Russo's the monster, if anybody is."
Eloise curls into a ball again and presses her forehead against her knees, hugging them to her chest tight. Tears leak down her trembling face and dampen the hospital gown as she tries to process everything. She can't imagine hurting so many people. How did they stop her? How did they fix her? Where even is she?
A hand brushes against Eloise's knee and she violently flinches away, her head snapping up. Eloise's watery eyes lock with Peter's miserable ones as he retracts his hand from her knee. His face, all bruised and swollen, is closer to Eloise and she just wants to take all the pain she caused everyone away.
She shakes her head. "I'm sorry." Her voice shakes. "I'm so sorry." Eloise presses the back of her palm to her quivering lips as she holds back violent sobs, her eyes squeezing shut as more hot tears leak down her cheeks.
Ned and Peter watch her break down helplessly. Neither of them know what to do, but there isn't really anything they can do. So, they just watch, their eyes glossy as well.
Eloise covers her face with her hands. "C-Can you guys—can you guys leave, p-please?" She hiccup.
"Yeah," Ned says softly. "Of course."
He turns and steps towards the door, but when he notices that Peter's feet are glued in place and he's still staring at Eloise brokenly, he grabs Peter's arm and tugs him gently.
"You heard her, Pete. She wants to be alone right now," he whispers to him.
Slowly, Peter's wet eyes flicker away from Eloise's shaking figure and he looks at Ned. He nods.
"Okay." His voice cracks.
With one last lingering glance at her, he follows his best friend out the door and closes it behind them.
Coldness fills the room where the two boys were. The only sound is the buzz and occasional beep from the monitor next to Eloise. That is, until her face crumples and she lets out the sobs she was holding in. The ugly, loud cries she didn't want to show. Big, salty tears cover her entire face and drop onto her gown and the blanket. Each sharp inhale burns her lungs and makes her head ache.
Eloise grasps onto her hair and buries her face in her arms sitting on her knees.
Eloise lets it all out.
🕸
She doesn't know how much time passes after Peter and Ned left. It feels like she cried for hours before slowly falling asleep again, then waking up with sore eyes and a sore throat. For a while, it's just Eloise sitting alone in the room. She takes this time to examine her surroundings, even though they're really not all that interesting.
The room is about twenty feet by twenty feet, if she had to guess. There's no windows or clocks, so she has no way of telling what time of day it is, what time it is, or how much time passes. The bed she's sat on is centered up against a wall with a small desk side table that has some papers, an empty glass of water, and a half-empty glass of water. Above it is the monitor that is, currently, displaying a blank black screen. The stool Bruce was on is pushed in under the desk below the monitor. On the other side of the bed is the pole that holds a bag of some kind of drug that was connected to the IV that was inserted into Eloise's arm when she first woke up in the room with Bruce. On the wall across from her is the door with a chair next to it. On the adjacent wall is a bunch of cabinets and counter space with a sink. The last wall has two chairs pressed against it, a coffee table of sorts in between.
After examining her room gets old, Eloise focus on her minor injuries—anything to distract herself from reality.
Her fingers trace the raw skin that circles her wrists like bracelets and ankles like anklets. Red, sore, scabbing bracelets and anklets. Why did Bruce restrain her, anyways? Something about being hostile? Was that when she was hurting everyone?
She doesn't have the time to ponder over that question as there's a knock on the door.
Eloise looks up and swallows. "Come in." She cringes at her weak voice as it rises from her sore throat.
The door opens slowly. The dark-haired man, Bruce, emerges with Bucky, Steve, and Peter in tow. Much to Eloise's surprise, that isn't it; Tony Stark files in, too. He's not dressed as he is in the magazines; instead of the designer suits and sunglasses, he's just wearing a normal black t-shirt with jeans. It's hard to not notice the black eye he's sporting.
Bucky's face is all scratched up and Eloise wonder in horror if she did that, too.
Bruce notices her fingers on her wrists and says, "I can bandage those up if they're bothering you."
Eloise lets her hands fall to her lap. "It's fine."
Peter's eyes are trained on the girl in the hospital bed. She can't look at his face right now, knowing that she caused the marks and bruises on his face.
The door closes behind Tony with a small click. He steps forward and says, "I don't believe we've officially met. I'm Tony."
Eloise gulps. She hurt him, too. She hurt everyone in the room.
"Eloise."
He smiles, but Eloise knows it's strained. "It's nice to finally meet you, Eloise." He pockets his hands and rocks back on his heels as he looks at Bruce.
Bruce sits down on the stool, but remembers last time he got too close to Eloise and makes sure to stay a few feet away. He pushes his glasses up his face and studies Eloise, much like everyone else is.
"Are you in any pain anymore?" He asks, tilting his head. "Dizzy, nauseous?"
"Tell me what happened, please," Eloise boldly requests, ignoring Bruce's questioning. She might not want to hear it, but she has to know what she did. She's already getting over the initial shock of being controlled or something, but that doesn't mean she's any more okay with what she did. Eloise is still deeply disturbed and distrusted at her actions.
Bruce glances at Tony questionably. He nods, then nudges Steve. He sighs and crosses his muscular arms over his chest. His eyes focus on Eloise. Everyone else focuses on her, too, but she's not even self-conscious about her appearance right now. Eloise may look like a train hit her, her skin pasty white, her hair a bird's nest, and her eyes giving the impression that she hasn't slept in weeks (in front of many Avengers, might she add), but Eloise doesn't care about that right now. She needs to know what she did.
Steve hesitates before he speaks, glancing at Peter at Tony's side. "You, Ned, and Peter got on a plane to New Orleans with Bucky and I. You thought you had motion sickness towards the end of the flight, but it turns out that is was something else that turned you into something that you're not." He pauses. "When Peter, Bucky, and I left to enter the building where we believed Russo was, you and Ned were in charge of hacking into security and guiding us to the wormhole."
"You started screaming," Peter remembers, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. His eyes open again and he focuses them on Eloise. "I could hear it through the mic. Ned started freaking out and said that something was wrong, and then you suddenly stopped screaming. Then there was a crash because, apparently, you trashed the computers and threw Ned to the wall. That's when the mics stopped working, and the next thing I knew, Russo showed up and said something about getting a little bit of help from someone because Steve said that he was outnumbered ..." He trails off and stops talking.
Steve picks up from where he left off. Bucky, Bruce, and Tony listen intently. "And then we heard shouts and saw you attacking a guard patrolling the building. You fought all of us, but then Russo showed up, so Bucky and I stopped him while Peter tried to stop you. You ended up blocking his airway and he passed out."
Eloise is quiet. She doesn't know how to process this information. She fought them? She doesn't remember any of it. How could that be? And how could Eloise, a lazy couch potato who consumes too much ice cream, possibly put up a fight against superheroes?
"Russo was behind you going nuts, obviously," Tony speaks up. Bucky sends him a look at his word choice, but he doesn't pay mind to him. "Banner found a peculiar bacteria in your bloodstream that somehow spread to your brain, basically controlling you."
Eloise literally feels like she's going to throw up.
Her eyes rise from her hands in her lap to the people in the room. They stop on Peter. Like the open book she is, he sees through Eloise and reads her emotions as if they're written out in front of him.
"I think we should give her some time to process this," Peter says quietly to Tony. Eloise internally thanks him.
The billionaire nods. "That'll probably be best."
He, Steve, Bruce, and Peter file out the door, Peter giving a sad smile before disappearing out the door.
Bucky stays. He stands stiffly with his arms crossed, feet spread apart slightly, and his chin tilted down as he watches Eloise. It's like his eyes pierce right through her.
"I was in a situation like yours before," he finally speaks after a few seconds of deafening silence. "HYDRA brainwashed me and made me fight my friends."
Eloise doesn't reply. She just stares back at Bucky as he talks.
"I almost killed Steve," he continues. "I killed a lot of innocent people."
Eloise gulps. "Did ... did I kill anyone?" She asks, scared for the answer.
Bucky looks down and he purses his lips. Hesitantly, he nods. Her stomach drops.
Eloise took someone's life away. She looks down at her hands and realize that they killed someone. She killed someone.
Suddenly, it's hard to breathe. Her chest is heavy and her lungs burn. Short breaths escape her lips.
Bucky looks up and notices Eloise's panic. He steps forward and sits on the edge of her bed next to her, his large hand enveloping her shoulder. Eloise's wide eyes lift and meet his understanding ones.
"Don't let it get to you, kid," he says. "Don't think about it, it wasn't your fault. You didn't kill anyone."
Eloise shakes her head and feels her eyes sting. Her body starts to shake again.
"I—I can't ... I killed someone?"
"No," Bucky says, instantly shooting down her words. "You can't think about it that way, it's dangerous. Trust me, I know how it feels to suddenly wake up and realize all the harm you've done." His hand releases the fragile girl's shoulder. "It sucks and it's going to be hard, but you're strong."
His words lowers her panic to just anxiety. She nods, thankful for his words. "Thank you," She whispers after a few moments of her calming down.
Bucky smiles half-heartedly. "Don't mention it." He stands and walks to the door. His hand hovers above the doorknob as he stops and turns his head. He looks over his shoulder at Eloise. "If you ever need anything, I'm here."
Then he's gone, and it's just Eloise alone with her thoughts.
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Attached Song: Waves by Dean Lewis
Today was the first basketball practice for the season (shoutout to hope_sees_the_stars ). It's my first time being the manager, and let me tell you. My first day as manager was👏 so👏 awkward👏
Thank goodness the coaches and players are lovely human beings.
Ⓚ