secrets

"Does that make sense?"

Avengers Facility - January 12th, 2016

"Emotions of those you touch... predictions of the future... and memories that aren't yours...."

The words were muttered by Dr. Cho, strands of shiny black hair framing her face as she leaned over a bright red clipboard. Pen in hand, she scribbled down the words before looking up, dark eyes meeting Christa's, lips parted ever so slightly with an expression of seriousness.

"Christa... you should know that I've never seen these symptoms before. I'm going to have to run some tests. All right?"

Christa gave a small shrug. "What can I do about it?" A hint of sarcasm laced her voice.

Dr. Cho gave a sympathetic smile before turning back to her state of seriousness. "I'm going to have to take some more blood samples, along with skin, hair, and saliva. I'll have to go through some more tests as well--standard for those with unusual abilities." She began scribbling down on her clipboard again. "Do you have any ancestral history of this sort of phenomenon?"

Christa exchanged a quick look with Stark. There was a pause. "Not as far as I'm aware."

Dr. Cho tilted her head. "What do you mean?"

"Definitely I have nothing on his side of the family." Christa jabbed towards Stark with her thumb. "But my mom's? Things are a bit of a mystery... there...."

The woman in front of her raised her eyebrows a bit as she jotted some things down. "All right. We may have to get back to that later, depending on how the physical samples turn out. How long have you been aware of these abilities?"

"Only for... a few days. Maybe a little more than that. It first happened when... when I was starting to live with the Bartons," Christa responded, slightly warily.

More writing.

"Could you describe the situations in which your abilities appear to have shown? Anything that could tie them together--something that triggers these powers?"

"They all happened randomly. The first time, I think, I was just in the kitchen, and I saw Clint dropping a couple of glasses, except it was all weird--kinda like a... a dream, where you feel like it's real but there's still something at the back of your head that says it's logically not. After I saw it happen, time sort of... rewound. It happened again, but actually this time. No dream feeling--just... déjà vu.

"The second time was when I was trying to calm down a baby. Clint's baby, Nathaniel. He was crying, and when I touched him I could feel his pain. Physically, I mean. I felt a sadness and pain and powerlessness and physical illness that couldn't just be mine all of a sudden. And his thoughts... they were so helpless."

She paused for a moment.

"And then the day I met him--" Christa pointed at Stark "--he was handing me these hearing enhancers and our fingers brushed together, and I saw a memory and had a feeling that wasn't mine. A memory of my mother, but she was a lot younger. And I had almost the exact same memory when he grabbed my wrist today. But longer. And I know for sure it wasn't mine. It was like a dream again. But... not.

"Does that make sense?"

For a moment, Christa let herself be vulnerable. Normally she tried to keep her emotions under a shield of sarcasm and roughness, but now.... Something that she'd kept hidden for days, something that shouldn't be kept hidden for long, was coming out.

And she felt relieved.

She looked up from her hands, only now realizing that she'd turned her gaze down to them while she'd been speaking. Her eyes met Stark's, and she thought she saw a glimmer of her own emotions in him.

Strange.

Dr. Cho was now looking right at Christa. The girl looked at her.

"Thank you." Her eyes held kindness. "Now I'm going to have to take some biological samples. And then you'll be on your way."

Christa gave a tight-lipped smile. "Yeah. Cool."

| | |

The next hour went by in flashes.

"These will take some time to analyze," Dr. Cho said once she had taken samples to determine what was wrong with Christa.

"It's time for you to come to the interrogation," Happy said the moment she'd stepped out of the lab.

"You can come," Christa had said to Stark after the longest of hesitations.

He said he would.

| | |

Walls covered in claustrophobia-inducing gray hexagons, a really strong A.C., and only another wall and one-mirror to separate Christa from a would-be kidnapper or killer?

Not the girl's ideal situation.

Her life had suddenly slowed down, suddenly become much more real.

The flashes had turned into a novel.

In the other room were two women: A woman in grey, hair matted, face scarred, who sat at a metal table to which her wrists were shackled; and a woman in black, dark hair short, thin face with eyes holding an expression of determination and hate masked slightly by a smooth face.

"Hey--remember, you don't need to be here for this. I know it must be hard."

Captain Steve Rogers stood beside Christa, towering over her. Somehow, he'd gotten out of his Avengers training sessions. She wasn't sure why he was there for an interrogation that had nothing to do with him, especially when he'd been "so busy" beforehand, according to Happy. She suspected it was because he wanted to make sure she was okay, because he was just like that.

Tony Stark stood nearby, but he was unusually silent, standing with his arms crossed and looking out past the glass window.

Aside from a couple of ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. agents sitting at a panel full of tech to track what was going on in the interrogation space, they were the only other people in the room.

"No. I need to be here," she stated abruptly. Three days had not lessened her hate for those who had attacked the Barton farm--one of which those working at the Avengers Facility had found not to be quite so dead as the others. Taking the woman in for questioning was a no-brainer. It had just been a few days before she, who had been injured in the attack, was well enough to be interrogated.

Why else was she doing this? It was what felt like the first time Christa was actually doing something over the past few days, and she didn't want to give the chance up. Even if she wasn't doing the interrogating herself.

And it was starting now.

"All right, let's get this over with as quickly as possible, because I've got a lot of stuff I could be doing right now," Maria Hill, best lieutenant of Nick Fury, began in the other room. Her voice was able to be heard in Christa's room through cameras and microphones in the interrogation room. "Of course, you're just going to go right back to your prison cell, so this must be the highlight of your day!" Sarcasm dripped from her words. Hill walked over to the table where the woman in shackles sat, eyes dark and scowling and blank.

Hill was met with silence. "Very talkative," she muttered. "Okay! Let's get right to it, then." She leaned on the table, arms stretched out as her hands grasped the sides, closer to the woman's scarred face. "What association do you align with?"

The woman merely spat in Hill's face.

Hill slowly backed up, wiping the saliva off her cheek. "You know we have tools to make you answer me, right? I'm just giving you a chance to talk without using them. And trust me, they aren't fun," she said, raising a brow, expression cool.

"Can't you just let me die? Like you let those Sokovians die? Like you let those in New York die? No loss, is it? It's just one little life, after all." The woman leaned closer to Hill. Her voice was mocking, low, cruel. "What's the difference?"

Hill started pacing around the room slowly. "Those deaths could have been prevented. But we can't prevent every bad thing from happening. We do what we can to save whatever lives we can. But you--" Hill shook her head, a sarcastic smile donning her lips "--you nearly took the lives of two separate people. A man and a child."

The woman straightened her back. "I wasn't the one to do it. I was just given my orders. The others did the worst."

"Now, tell me about these others," said Hill. "Your team. What do they stand for? Who do you all work under? What is your organization?"

The woman smirked. "Why would I tell you that? You Avengers just go and ruin everything," she said mockingly.

Hill closed her eyes, as though trying not to yell.

"Do you want me to make you answer my questions?" She spat the words out, her attempt to hold in her temper failing miserably.

The woman gave an empty, echoing laugh.

"Fine. Want me to tell you something?" she said softly, leaning forward again. "Come closer."

Hill hesitated, but followed the woman's orders, stepping up to the table.

"Closer."

Hill leaned in, hands on the edges of the table once again, listening, waiting.

"Hail Hydra."