The Things You Can't Remember Tell The Things You Can't Forget
"This is your....fault Avengers. You failed...you failed to get the....mutant community...on side. Now we have...now we have to take them...by force. Starting with this....with this freak. She's our....She's our soldier..now."
The same speech played in her dreams each night, choked out in stunted breaths on the flicker of an almost broken cellphone screen that had recorded her words. Her head held back by weathered, dirty fingers gripping her hair as she fought against the bindings around her shoulders. It was the last thing she could remember before waking in the white room. The screen laying in the rubble of the building she had been held captive inside before members of the ever dwindling SHIELD company came to her rescue. The only memory she held in a mind that refused to recall anything else.
Ever since the events of Sokovia, things had never been quite the same for those born with mutations. Government scrutiny had increased exponentially, along with ever public outcries for those who chose to act upon the side of good to be placed on trial for their percieved crimes. That interest now found them in the position of being classed as governmental items of interest. Items which they had recently staked a claim to under the pretence of being dubbed 'weapons of mass destruction'. While some of them were safe due to their relatively benign skills; herself, Jean Grey and Professor Charles Xavier had been quick to find their safety in jeapardy. A situation which found them in the position they had been the day of their capture; fighting a select team pulled from the military, led by General Ross, to collect them for trophies and weaponisable commodities.
Some had been reluctant to turn the situation into a fight to protect them, but unsurprisingly, the last lingering remnants of the Avengers – the rest having fallen to the power of Thanos – had been the first to throw their hats into the ring.
"Natasha, we got guys coming in from the left, down Mainstreet and up from Third. Might want to get somebody to take out the Tanks. " Neveilla instructed as she pressed a finger to her earpiece, having been scoping the situation they currently found themselves in from the rooftop of a building nearby with Clint. About to make her way back down with him, she steeled over as she saw a young family huddled by the wall of the neighbouring bank, clearly frightened as the couple sheltered their small children. Wordlessly she moved to leave the rooftop, Clint calling after her as he craned his head to watch her. "Neveilla! Don't be a hero! You can't handle all this on your own!" he yelled, although she had already left and begun to make her way down the fire escape. Clint was quick to follow her.
Reaching the street, Neveilla pushed her way through the crowd of concerned civilians to get to the young family, keeping her head bowed until she had reached them. She didn't say anything to them as she turned her back, casting a shield around them to protect them. This was enough to spark the crowds attention as they fell painfully silent, seeming to gather around as they stared with rapt attention. The silence seemed to last an age before being broken by a particularly brave man at the very back of the mob yelled 'This is her fault! Fucking Mutant!!!" before lighting an old rag that he had stuffed into a bottle of vodka, throwing the bottle over the crowd in her direction as others in the crowd began to scream accusations. She quickly deflected the flaming alcohol bottle as well as other missiles, the crowd beginning to grow unruly again as various people broke away in search of weaponry before returning.
Clint had only managed to get part way onto the overfilled streets before the crowd closed in on him, their backs firmly held to him as they turned their attention to the scene Neveilla had created in her attempt to protect the small children huddled with their parents. He hadn't expected her to do any less considering how long he had known her, but he was still angry for putting herself in danger. "Neveilla! For God sake!" he snapped to himself as he noticed a tall lamppost by his side, studying it for a moment before climbing it to see if he could gain a better view of what was happening in front of him. It was just when he had reached the top that he witnessed a clearly panicked police officer pull out his tazer and use it to its full force on Neveilla, forcing her to her knees although the shield around the family still held strong.
Neveilla hadn't noticed the tazer until it had already been activated, far too late for her to do anything but take the hit. She clenched her jaw as the force of the electric current forced her to her knees, her eyes forcing themselves closed. For a few brief moments she lost her clear sense of hearing, the streets sounding as though she were inside an aquarium. But as suddenly as the loss of hearing occured, her head erupted with thousands of thoughts from the people around her, all resonating and screaming to be heard in their anger. She had always been able to at least be selective in what she heard from those around her - although the feelings she caught from them were beyond her control - but there was no controlling what she heard at the moment. She couldn't block a thing. She was rooted to her position on the floor as her head ached with so much unbridled activity, the woman having to shake her head a few times before she managed to dull the noise enough that the only thing she could hear above the din was her heavy breathing. When she felt the first glass bottle collide with the side of her head, it was enough to pull her back to her senses as she got to her feet, thrusting her arms outwards to force the crowd back and away from her, enough force being used that the concrete ground cracked, creating a crater that encircled her and the young family behind her. She began to yell at them to get back in the hopes that she would be able to get the children to safety, but her words died quickly as she scanned the crowd. Some of the faces amongst them she recognised and they were not there in the hopes of peace, rather men she recognised as high ranking amongst Ross's military elite, clearly there to fuel the situation.
Their distraction had been clear as she stood, neither herself not Clint noting the helicopter that had tracked them to this exact location. The first instance Neva was aware of their company it was already too late as an oppressive device was launched through the bottom of the helicopter. In understanding that her powers required the control of her eyes and hands, a halo like device enclosed around her head to block her eyes, white capsules at the front of the device drawing her hands up to her face and holding them forcefully in place as she was knocked to the floor.”
The fight to reclaim the captured mutants had been long and arduous in nature, and not all of them had been saved. Those who had were incomplete in one form or another due to the tests that had been carried out on them in the name of progress and education. Scott Summers had been relieved of his eyes not long after arriving on Ryker’s Island, the screams that had rattled through the prison having provided another backdrop to Neveilla’s recurrent nightmares. But at least he had lived. Logan had been stripped for parts, his adamantium enriched skeleton having been hung like a trophy in Ross’s office; looming over the desk like a crucifixion scene, borne of a religion that brought little but hate and suffering in it’s following. The desk in question carried a bell jar filled with a clear fluid, the brain of the most brilliant man she had ever met floating within.
Neveilla herself had been used, along with Jean Grey, to power a machine the government had hoped would transmit controlling brainwaves to mutants that still dwelt within the confines of the US. With each failure in it’s ability to reach them, the machine had been powered up even further, to the point where Jean had died still hooked up to the machine. She herself carried her physical scars; a deep welt at the base of her skull where the device had been hooked to her being the most garish remnant of these. But the largest effect had been on her memory, of which had been mostly wiped clean like a slate. No memory of her allies. Of her friends. Her love.
Except for that one nightmare that refused her rest.
It was as a shell of her former self that she found herself on the small Blackbird plane being delivered back to the safety of the Avenger’s Compound she had only just begun to know as home. She sat quietly at the back, rocking gently from side to side in her safety belt as the plane began it’s tumultuous descent, a glazed over expression on her face as others who were sat with her watched her wearily. They didn’t know what to say to her, truth be told. Didn’t understand whether the woman they had considered a friend and colleague still dwelt within.
