Finding Memories

Chapter Twenty

"Ok, ok! Stop!" Nat shouted as Y/N's hand death gripped her own.

After a minute of being in one specific memory's flashback, Wanda started to pull back after seeing how tense Y/N had become.

"No!" she shouted, releasing her locked jaw. "I'm fine! Keep going." Her tone was firm even if her face showed discomfort and anguish.

Nat and Wanda shared a short look of unease but followed what they agreed upon when they first started.

"No matter how bad it gets, keep going unless I say so," Y/N had instructed.

"Do we need a safe word?" Nat joked at the time.

Seconds before Nat was about to throw all that out of the window and cut her off, Y/N's eyes opened wide and her breathing stopped.

"I remember why I know him," she said softly. The sweat from the intense manipulation showed on her forehead and she was shaking some while still holding onto Nat's hand.

"Jesus." Wanda took a breath herself seeing what Y/N had seen.

Nat looked between the two and saw all kinds of emotions flowing between them.

"How did you know him?" She asked them in order to focus their minds one thing.

Y/N took a second but she blinked out of her daze and looked at Nat.

"He, uh," she stammered, bringing a hand up to wipe her hair away and the sweat that it was sticking to. "He was another experiment at the facility. I think we were cellmates at some point."

"Cellmates?"

"It had to have been when I first got there. The first couple of years I wasn't of much importance to them. There was someone stronger and apparently more powerful than me they were focused on," Y/N explained. She brought her knees up to her chest and stared off into the distance as she retold what she had found. "I was young in the memory. He was too. We were low-level mutants so they crammed us in a tiny cell together and would come to take us to the operating rooms and have their way with us."

Everyone in the room cringed at the thought of someone having their way with another. The saying never, nor would ever, become easier to hear no matter how many times it happened in cases like this.

"We were friends. We only had each other for the most part," she continued. "When one was taken and then brought back later, bruised, beaten, and bloody, we would take turns consoling and try to help whatever pain they inflicted on us. But Gabriel... He didn't heal as fast." She looked at them both. "There were a lot of times I thought it was the end for him because of how bad of condition he would come back in."

"Does he have any kind of healing powers?" Nat asked.

"I don't think so. If he does it's barely above a normal person's healing rate," she answered.

"What happened when you were no longer in the cell with him?" Wanda asked, thinking back to the memory herself.

She thought back, closing her eyes and trying to remember the excruciating details.

"They moved us eventually. We could still talk to each other but it was through a vent in the wall. We were separated by a few cells," she answered. "It was after they learned I was capable of more than just healing. I was contained in a room by myself after that. And... I was pulled by the doctors and scientists a lot more often."

There was silence for the horror they were sure she was reliving in her mind right now. Then her eyes widened.

"Wanda, I need you to look for something else," she turned to her.