Chapter 17

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I looked to the Avengers in shock.

"I – I don't – I don't know how... how I-"

"You were with Hydra?" Steve asked.

I looked to all of the Avengers in slight fear. Wanda had her magic ready at her sides, but her face was distraught. Bucky had his hand on a gun, and Pietro was looking at me in disbelief.

"It's – it's not like that-"

"So you're not infiltrating the tower and giving them information?" Natasha asked.

I shook my head quickly.

"I can explain-"

"Why didn't you explain when I first hired you?" Tony asked.

"I – I didn't think you'd believe me-"

"Well, if you moved something with your mind, I'm pretty sure he would have believed you," Natasha spat.

"I couldn't do that before!" I yelled. "It was the extreme conditions!"

The Avengers looked to each other in confusion and I looked down to my hands.

"What do you mean?" Pietro asked, finally speaking.

I took a deep breath, preparing to explain.

"When... when my mother was pregnant with me, she and my father joined Hydra," I said. "They – they thought that they were going to change the world. Hydra experimented on my mother in hopes that I would be born as some sort of super human. And I was. I have a perfect mind. I can remember everything I've ever seen, heard, thought, or said, and I learn new skills almost instantly. I was able to begin speaking at only four months old."

I took a deep breath before continuing.

"After I'd reached five years of age, they started putting me in what they called 'extreme conditions'. They'd drown me, they'd set me on fire, they'd torture me, all to see if my powers would manifest. They never did, and my parents decided that they didn't want their little girl to be treated like that anymore."

I wiped a tear from my cheek before continuing.

"In 2014, my parents figured out how to escape. They erased all of the data about us from the data base and took me and ran. Three days later, all of Hydra's files were dumped onto the internet, but ours were still missing."

I rubbed my arms and closed my eyes briefly. This was the worst part of the story.

"When I was seventeen, Hydra found us again. They... my parents figured out that they were coming five minutes before they reached our home. I – my parents, they... they bought me time to run."

My voice turned into a hoarse whisper.

"And I – I knew that I couldn't let them find me. I – I did an online university course and I was able to convince them to let me take the final exams, and so I got my two degrees. But I ended up working in a shitty diner because no one wanted me without experience... until I got here. And then... I guessed that being around you guys would stop them from hurting me."

I looked down to the ground shamefully. Now they knew everything. They all knew that I'd been lying to their faces this entire time.

"So you've got a perfect mind and telekinesis," Tony said slowly. "Did the experiments accomplish anything else?"

I shook my head as Wanda said, "Yes." 

I looked over to her in confusion and she sighed.

"Sometimes I can't get into your mind," she said. "It's like you have a shield. Whenever I tried to look at your past, it was like there was a wall that was stopping me from looking. I assumed that perhaps you had bad trauma and you were repressing it..."

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