Prompt: A little out of the ordinary (Adverse Effects I âThis wasnât supposed to happenâ)
Summary: A young Natasha Romanoff and some of the horrors of her childhood.
Tagging: @strxngemxgick @cherryfinolahobbes (If youâd like to be added to my little tag/story list for whumptober just let me know :)
Leather cuffs strained against small wrists as Natalia threw her weight against them, thrashing to escape the hands that tried to hold her down, but Misha was merciless, had always been merciless. Screams still haunted the walls of the laboratory as the red haired girl fought, one of the other girls.
Inessa. Her voice was rough, tore through her throat at a higher pitch then the others.
There was peace in knowing that⌠as long as Inessa screamed it wasnât Yelena, it wasnât her sister. Still young, still sweet, still not ready for the  ânext stepâ. Natalia herself was only ten, Inessa fifteen, but Madame told her she was moving up quickly, the prize of the soviet empire.
It didnât feel like much of a prize. Girls entered the lab through cold, steel doors and either they returned, pale faced and catatonic, or they were never seen again. âNO!â A simple word but it seemed to be enough to set off the man trying to hold her down carefully. Large hands clamped around her shoulder, pressing them down onto the metal table she was tied to.
Cold panic crashed over the red roomâs apprentice, feet scrambled over cold metal, trying to get a grip, her fingernails gained purchase on the soft flesh of the mains arm, tearing at his skin. Misha simply grunted, eased his grip, then slammed the girl back down, hard. Hard enough for her head to hit the metal.
âNow, sweet one, this isnât the way for a future widow to behave.â
Natalia seized to move immediately as the steady thud of a cane struck the floor, walking ever closer. The voice made her shiver. Sweet as honey, so much care placed into it, but it never warmed, never made the words feel sincere.
âAdminister the Serum.â The woman gave the order. A heartbeat later they tied off both of her arms, restraining blood flow to reveal her veins. Needles, thick and long pushed into her skin.
âBe strong, girl. You are marble and marble doesnât break and you!â The voice turned to the man restraining her.
âIf you canât restrain a little girl we have no further use for you here, leave.â And leave he did, without as much as a second glance. This would have been her chance to fight, to claw open the restraints, to run before her screams joined Inessaâs, but every inch of fight Natalia had had accumulated at some point melt away with the arrival of Madame Helena.
âDonât scream.â A voice whispered into her ear. Natalia flinched, taking a shaky breath.
âScream and youâre dead.â The young girl repeated, her voice barely audible as she withdrew into herself, eyes glazing over as she trained her gaze onto the ceiling, hollow, as if her soul simply vanished into nothingness while faceless scientists hooked her up to the tubes, filled with electric blue liquid and wires leading back to a heart monitor.
A gasp, something screeched in her ears, fuzzy. Her body was on fire, gasoline running through her veins. It was hard to breathe, to force air into her lungs, to stop her body from shaking in agony. Eyes screwed shut, only to rip open a heartbeat later. Seconds stretched to minutes, to hours as fire burned through her heart, her fingertips, down to her toes, eating its way inside her bones.
Still Natalia refused to scream. Willpower being the only thing that held her together as she drowned in pain.
âThis wasnât supposed to happen!â The words were registered but she couldnât react to them, nor know who had spoken them as her body was thrown in another fit of convulsions, tearing against her restraints.
âThe serum is burning her from the inside.â
âHer death will be on your hands.â
âLet her, another girl not worthy of the program. Another failed attempt. There will be others.â
Scream and youâre dead⌠Natalia held the words close, repeating them like a mantra over and over as her heart threatened to shatter her ribcage as it beat faster and ever faster.
The fire raged on inside of her, yet she never made a soundâŚ
She was marble, marble didnât breakâŚ
A last thought before darkness finally claimed her.
âThatâs a good girlâŚâ Madame Helenaâs voice was the first thing the young girl registered as she regained consciousness. âWe will continue with another dose tomorrow. You will be the pride of the Red Room one day.â
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Regis (Regina if you're going the female route) gets kidnapped at a young age au. Young enough that months or even years of torture and experiments cause him/her to forget pieces of his old life, including his old name, but not young enough to where he/she doesn't recognize that this is horrible and he/she needs to escape. Eventually, they escaped and have been surviving in the wild for a good amount of time until a couple of Galahdians find them. The scientists called them Subject IM-13, they call themself Matdas. They are 17 or 18 years old when the Wall gets pulled back. (I keep switching between male and female Regis in regards to this au for whatever reason, nonbinary Regis is up in the air right now, so they/them until I can make a decision.)
Since long before Quirks appeared, hell, long before America had been taken by the British, the Midoriya Clan have been record keepers.
Izuku can remember the nights when all the doors and windows were closed and locked and he would be huddled up in his parentsâ bed with his dad and mom cuddling him, listening to the whispers of his fatherâs stories.
Closed doors and whispered voices were a sign that a tale was being told and for you to listen for it might save your life in the Midoriya household.
The one tale that had always stuck with Izuku, however, was a tale nobody remembers. A tale whispered in the Midoriya Clan for 200 years. A tale you wonât hear about in the history books or from the People. A tale lost to Time, only remembered by the Midoriya Clan because the sole survivor of the tale told them it and asked them to keep it.
His father had called it the Tale of the Forgotten Hero.
Izuku called it the Tragedy of the Two Lost Brothers.
Even though he had only been told the tale once, as is custom in the Midoriya Clan, he remembers every word. Sometimes even whispered the tale to himself during the rougher days of elementary and middle school. It was forbidden to repeat stories already told, even to yourself, but Izuku needed to hear the story during those days.
The tale was a Tragedy, Izuku knew, but it also was a story of Hope in the Darkest of Days.
So, as Izuku watches everybody around him and holds Eri close because heâs the only one sheâs letting close to him, in the hospital, recovering. He remembers the tale and the emotions it gave him.
So, as the adults in the room try to figure out a way to do the tests on Eri without causing a breakdown, Izuku carefully sets Eri down beside him on the hospital bed and adjusts their position so sheâs laying next to him and theyâre cuddling. Grimacing only a little bit as his injuries twitch and scream at him in irritation at his movements.
She stares at him in confusion, holding tight to his hospital gown.
He smiles at him and, ignoring every Midoriya instinct screaming at him to not tell the tale before non-Midoriyaâs, whispers, âWould you like to hear a tale?â Eri blinks at him and tilts her head.
âTale?â she whispers back. He nods. It may be forbidden, he thinks back to his instincts, but she needs this. Just let me give her something to hold on to as Hope. The instincts quiet down just like he knew they would.
âWould you like to hear a tale? You donât have to,â he repeats the question, voice still in a whisper.
She thinks about it then nods her head, curling up closer to Izuku.
Izuku breathes in then out. He stares at the ceiling. The tale comes easily to him once he begins.
He begins, whispering the tale to Eri like all of his ancestors before him,
âThis story takes place 200 years ago, around the beginning of the First Quirk Appearance. There were two orphan siblings, one older and one younger. The older brother was born with a Quirk. The younger brother was born Quirkless.â
âWhen the younger brother was six years old, one day on his way home from school, a van appeared and took him away. The van belonged to the government. He was sent to, what was called, the Lab.â
Eriâs eyebrows furrow in confusion, âBut heâs Quirkless? I thought only Quirked people were taken .â Eri had also tensed at the word Lab. Izuku rubs her arm up and down soothingly.
âNot this Lab. This lab has been taking Quirkless children by the millions since the 20th century, long before Quirks showed up. And they had many facilities all over the world.â Whatâs even more of a tragedy was that this was a government-funded agency. There would be no Heroes and officers rescuing these children, not with the bureaucracy in the way. Izuku kept this thought to himself.
Eri looks up at him, âWhat about the Quirked brother? How did he react?â
Izuku shrugs and shakes his head. âNobody knows. The only survivor who came forward to tell his story was the younger brother. We donât know the older brotherâs side. And this tale is lost through time so nobody knows the story.â Eri frowns sadly at that.
âThe Lab and its Men in White Lab Coats tormented and experimented on these children. Few survived after the first couple of experiments. The younger brother being one of the few survivors. His birth name is lost in Time, having been forcibly changed to Subject 27 by the Men in White Lab Coats, codenamed First by the other children while they were in the Lab. For Subject 27 had been the first child since the Labâs establishment whose body had accepted the experiments. The first who was able to access and use the powers forced inside of him and buried into his DNA. There were four other children out of the 25 million stuck in the Japanese branchâs Lab who survived the experiments. They were Subjects 100, 48, 19, and 9, codenamed Jagger, Gadget, Ruff, and Tiny respectively. When First was 14 years old, so a year younger than my age, some of the newbies started rebelling. They almost escaped if they hadnât been killed off or dead because of the experiments, much to the Men in White Lab Coatsâ disappointment. The five children who had survived the experiments had observed what had happened, using Jaggerâs electronic power, noting the doâs and donâts of escaping. Then, they conserved their energy, doing less as good on their training simulations but passing it off as their body just recovering from the latest set of experiments.âÂ
He pauses to take a breath and let Eri digest what she was being told. The trembling that had started up once he talked about the experiments and such slowed down when he mentioned they were planning to escape.
She looks up at him in confusion when she realizes that he wasnât talking anymore, âWhyâd you stop?â He smiles softly in response and continues.
âSo, when the time was right, they struck. Jagger turned off all the power and purposely spread a computer virus to every single electronic in the facility. Unleashing the eldritch monsters some of the poor children had turned into because of the experiments due to their mind not being able to handle it. While also releasing the five children from their cages. While the poor monster children caused chaos and brought revenge upon their creators before the injuries and the experiments finally kill them, the five children escape in the chaos. Tiny gathers up all the paper evidence they will need, Ruff steals their weapons, Gadget turns each chemical component in the Lab into a bomb using the power forced upon her, and First weakens the infrastructure using her telekinetic powers. They stole an automatic self-driving car and First set the entire facility on fire while Jagger forced the electronic fence to open up then close behind them, turning up the electricity as it closes. According to First, it had set on fire soon after. They watched as the place they had known for most of their lives burn down to the ground. They knew the government agency would be after them, so they went on the run. Relying on each other to survive. Tiny and Jagger sent all the information they had gathered to the media on every platform, including the public internet.â
Izuku takes another breath and looks down to see Eri had laid her head on his chest and had her eyes closed. She was relaxed, but Izuku knew she was listening.
He didnât realize the conversation around him has stopped. That everybody was listening to his story now, including the Pro Heroes resting in the room with him.
âFirst was 18 years old by the time the revolution/protests/riots they had started up came to a close. The Lab had managed to kill off every single one of the surviving kids, until First was the only one left. But thanks to their efforts, change was coming. The government agency that once was the Lab had been stripped and forcibly shut down, the remaining children freed and returned to their family. Once the public realized that it was Quirkless children who were being taken and their own who were forcing these powers upon those children, the public fairly quickly turned in favor of the Quirked population. People lost their trust in the government. Reform was demanded. Hero Society was created in response, not only to take care of the growing number of criminals with powers, but also to gain public favor again. The public wasnât fooled. Under Firstâs command, the protesters stormed government capital in every country. They sat within the capital and made change upon, with the experimented-on children, the Quirked people, and other minority groups having the most sway over what will change. The rich were executed in front of their peers, politicians were stripped of their power, and the People took control with minorities having the most say as to what changes will take place. The government took back control 20 years after these reforms; unfortunately for the government though, the people had made it impossible for any loopholes or changes to be made to their reforms. Unfortunately for the Quirkless and âWeak Quirkâ holders, the government responded by changing public perspective on them over the next 200 years with propaganda and painting them out to be not worthy of living in this world.â
âSubject 27, or Tsunayoshi as he grew to call himself, never found out about his older brother nor reunited with him. But he never really did give up on the idea that one of these days, his older brother was going to found out what had happened to him. Tsunayoshi had decided to keep his identity a secret so by the time the reforms happened, everybody had forgotten what he looked like. So, his brother couldnât exactly know it was him. Tsunayoshi was 23 years old when he approached a Midoriya, a Record Keeper, and asked for them to keep his story.â
Izuku finishes the story the same way Midoriyaâs always finish the story, âI tell you this tale so that you may live.â
Eri had relaxed completely, glad that the Lab was gone yet sad that the two brothers never reunited. He glanced down to see that she was fast asleep and smiles. Even though itâs a sad tale⌠I havenât even introduced Papa to her and sheâs already a Midoriya.
âThe older brother never wondered?â Someone speaks up. Izuku flinches and turns his head to see that everybody was sitting or lying in a hospital bed, looking at him.
He blushes when he realizes that he had gotten lost in the story and forgotten where he was.
Papaâs gonna be so angry at me when he founds outâŚ
He stammers, âE- eh? I â I - âŚ. Uh⌠What?â
âThe older brother,â Mirio, sitting across from him, repeats, âThis Tsunayoshiâs older brother. He never wondered?â
Izuku pauses then shrugs, âWe donât know. We were only ever told Tsunayoshiâs side of the story. Neither Tsuna nor any of us Midoriyas, nor the other surviving children before their deaths, learned of what the older brotherâs fate was, not even Jagger was able to find any information on him. His story never got told.â Izuku had always been saddened by that, that they donât even have a name and the older brother never learned of where his younger brother had gone.
That was why he called it the Tragedy of the Two Lost Brothers.
It was not that much of a surprise to find just how resilient the Descender happened to be, and as a man of patience, he was quite content in watching the small subtle changes that would occur over time, as they came to realise that they truly had no one else to turn to.
Since he wanted them alive, the process was a slow and gradual one - certain elixirs injected into pale skin with each passing day, soft words spoken to break up the empty moments that lingered between them. It was only a matter of time, and time was something that he now had even more of. How delightful it was, to simply be able to slow down the passage of time, to make the days and nights all so much longer for the Descender, even as those outside rushed to try and find a way to get to them.
Such a shame they'd find their efforts to have been in vain. With a soft hum, the Doctor took a seat across from Aether, lazily pushing a plate of food across the table, "I apologise for being late, I had to attend to a few thing", he paused, tilting his head, "Aether? Do you hear me?".
Here he was. Sitting somewhere comfortable, his life taken a path he had never believed possible. How many days and nights had passed? Even if he would have counted, Aether was sure, no, he was sure that he would still be wrong. He had grown weary. Perhaps one of the reasons why he found it hard to swallow down whatever food he was being offered as he tried to dodge looking at the one, who was the source of his torment. Albeit, it was really nobody but himself he could blame for this situation now, could he?
âI'm not hungry.â, he finally replied defeated, hand clenched into a fist upon realizing just how difficult it was to speak right now. Perhaps, because he didnât feel too well, but there always had dwelled a sense of something within himself, that made it hard to show whatever he felt. At least if it was something negative. The knowledge that everyone keep counted on him, over and over again, surely it must have come from this, right?
Aether didn't even comment on the fact that he was late because truly, he wouldn't even have noticed anyway. It felt like he had lost any sense of time by now anyway. Even if he wanted to say something, what could he possibly? Actually, it was rather enjoyable currently when the taller one was gone. It put him at ease knowing, that nothing would be done on him then. Instead, he found himself concerned of those who would, without question, try to save him. Though he knew they existed, it seemed as if he had forgotten their faces. No matter how hard he tried to remember, their faces were... weirdly blurry.
H/C post - What Orion specifically WENT THROUGH, what his scars mean, etc.
tw for torture / punishments / unethical experiments / attempted augmentations & cybernetics. / death and the usual <
In the 35 years of his time locked up and restrained in a warehouse off the coast of Sinnoh in a different Rainbow Rocket HQ, Orion was forced to watch all of his friends, human and pokemon alike, be killed in punishments / selfish experiments that included forcing a pokemon into mega evolution (similar to the volcanion movie), except infusiing the mega stone of the pokemon into their flesh by any means necessary.
Orion has one of these scars, a small dent, scarred tissue on the back of the neck because he ripped his out upon escaping for the final time, thereâs remnants of metal plating in his main games verse that some people have thought theyâre just dulled spikes, but, theyâre not. Thereâs also an attempt to have done his in his scythe claw (unlike most garchomp, his scythe claw is much smaller and he has two separate claw digits that are much smaller, like another character of mine, Fukuro has.
These, however, are augmentations, the claws are of the same material, but the digits themselves are robotic, and to this day, he still knows how to use them, despite how much he despises it, they augmented it to HURT if he tried taking them off by any means necessary, or, well, a kill switch to destroy the nerves if he even tried.
Heâs had pokemon slice him open during punishments, taken bullets, almost was killed during an experiment that wanted to study his brain functions that would pretty much erase his memory, like a forced amnesia, but he woke up as they were trying to inject him with anesthetics and well, was stabbed in the head with the syringe as he made his escape,
To Orionâs current knowledge. He has escaped every facility theyâve brought him to at least a dozen times each, Thereâs scarred tissue over his head from the syringe still, since it was, you know, forcibly inserted. He has no clue how he even survived any of the torture. Gligar claws to the stomach, getting poisoned, burned, paralyzed time and time again, just to be healed, and forced an ailment on himself again.
All that time, Orion felt he was in purgatory, being tortured for the rest of his life. He didnât want to commit suicide, he wanted to escape, to survive, by any means necessary. These people tried to destroy his mind, traumatize him--murdered all of his friends in cold blood or by the extent of their experiments. It wasnât until he finally escaped, until he finally made it out of that hellish world and into this timeline that he finally broke, The first two years in the Nebel Plateau he self harmed near daily, drank himself numb for the next 8 years until interactions start. Heâs dawned a survivalist, on guard and seemingly hostile personality, because in reality. He doesnât want to be hurt anymore. He doesnât want people to see who he truly is. It hurts him
He still, to this day in terms of his interactions, will sometimes burst with intent to end it all at even the slightest trigger of his trauma, the memories are god-forbid awful and, well, he suffers greatly at just a simple thought of what he went through.
So, if Orion even tells you a fraction of his pain
Consider yourself lucky, because he trusts you enough to open up about it.
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