#alyyvolchitsa

[cmdrtroi-blog]

There was a moment where she felt like she was falling through a void as she realized she had no idea where she was. She opened her eyes, taking in the sight of a clean room with several machines that hummed quietly. She found, even after all the time she had been away (days? Weeks? Months? Time had run together with nothing to mark the passage of time), that she missed the vibrations of warp engines.

She pushed herself into a seated position and tried her best not to flinch away from the needle in her arm.

They stuck her with what felt like hundreds of needles, pricking her skin and drawing her blood greedily from her veins. She felt their curiosity as well as cold, scientific detachment. They didn't see her as a person, just another specimen to be studied and, eventually, dissected. Her wrists were raw from struggling against restraints and she ignored their questions firmly. This was Earth, somewhere in the past, and she wasn't about to contaminate her timeline by disobeying the Temporal Prime Directive. They asked her about her comm badge, showing her pieces of it and demanding to know how it worked.

She felt their frustrations as well as her own as they questioned her continuously. She knew that they were looking for anything that could help their selfish plans--whatever they were, several of them believed that they were essential to their world. She hadn't felt that sort of... fanaticism in years.

They eventually left her in a tiny cell with no windows and the only light came from a bulb above her head. She knew that the intention was to make her feel lonely, to drain her of her energy, but she found it so much better than the pervasive frustration of the scientists who ran tests on her. They scanned her brain frequently, hoping to discover why it was so different.

She spent her days alone in her cell, stretching and contracting her mind depending on her moods. Some days she wanted the comfort of not being alone and others the agony of the other prisoners made her pull her mind close. But she wanted, desperately, to get away, to be free. She lost track of the days but she remembered the faces.

There was a younger scientist whose guilt rolled off him in waves. She used his guilt to break through his professional demeanor, easing information out of him one thread at a time. It was tedious but each piece of information was one step closer to home. Given enough time, perhaps she could convince him to help her. Fortunately, help came before then in the form of men with guns. She felt the terror of her fellow prisoners and those monitoring them and it overwhelmed her, drowning her in it before she had time to put up her defenses.

She blinked, breaking free of the memory with a firm shake of her head. She wasn't there anymore and there--the window was shaded but she saw the sunlight filtering through. She blinked away tears, relief coursing through her. She was free. Deanna let herself relax, still exhausted and confused. She had no idea where she was but she sensed that she was safe here. 

Now all that remained was to find out where here was. Her eyes closed on their own accord and she found herself drifting back to sleep. For the first time since she had arrived in this time period, she felt safe.

[consulting-mechanic]

"Probably would have taken another hour if my coffee mug hadn’t run dry.  My kidneys are still in place so that can’t be why you’re here.  I give."

[directorromanoff-blog]

"What, a girl can’t pay a friendly visit? … Well, all right, from anyone else, you might believe that. SHIELD wanted me to check up on you, since we heard about the Extremis and Mandarin incident."

[consulting-mechanic]

"No, actually I wouldn't have bought that from anyone.  You can tell them I'm fine and probably coming off medical restrictions at the end of the week.  Until then I'm doing my other job."

[aintkilledmeyet]

(emotion meme) Nostalgia

Fondly did she recall the time when her home was a duffel bag slung over her shoulder, and her family was a group of perfect strangers who picked her up off the side of the road.

The year was 1973. Angelina had just been robbed, all her savings and a large amount of belongings from the past six years had been taken. She saw that as a sign to get out of there. No planning, no two weeks notice, just a handful of essentials stuffed into a bag and a pair of worn out tennis shoes 'borrowed' from a donation bin.

(She donated a new pair a few years later, to make up for it)

She'd only made it a mile and a half out of an unremarkable West Virginia town when a gaudily painted van pulled over in front of her. A girl with violently red curly hair stuck her head out of the front window, waving pleasantly. "Hey, where you headed?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, sugar!" Nina called back, offering a helpless sort of shrug.

"Hey, same as us! Come on in, we've got plenty of room!"

And that was how the makeshift family of outcasts and misfits adopted Nina in, no questions asked.

They took a winding, roundabout route west, towards California. They claimed that was the final destination, but that they were going more to go than to get there. Nina took an immediate liking to them.

It wasn't cushy, and they spent more than one night sleeping in the back of the van with folded up road maps working as paper fans, but there was never any judgement, any pretense. They laughed, cried, bore their souls for one another, and Nina shared as much as she reasonably could.

They spent nearly three months on the road, sometimes stopping for days at a time for one reason or another. But it was an adventure. She never knew what the next day would hold, and for once that didn't terrify her.

There are times when she longs for those three months.

[shielddeputydirector]

alyyvolchitsa is on file

Maria did not feel she owed explanations to the Avengers over SHIELD's handling of Agent Coulson's ... condition. There had been a lovely funeral with military honors as befitted a former Army Ranger, and a neat white headstone among the rows upon rows in Arlington for a hero. That he was not in that grave was a minor detail; he had died and funerals were for the living anyway. Her personal feelings on the subject of respecting the honored and sacred sleep of the dead were immaterial; SHIELD required her silence and so her silence it would have. If she knew the Black Widow had accessed the files, well, she was supposed to stay quiet, wasn't she?