#trcstme

The date itself had gone well. Mason was kind, funny, and took interest in everything that Winn was saying. For a moment he thought that maybe he was wrong about the entire dating scene and it wasn't that bad. Until he took a sip of his last drink and felt something was off. Quickly he pulled out his phone as he tried to call for an Uber, Mason offering to walk Winn outside while they waited. He didn't think anything of it until he was leaning against his date and his phone was on the ground. Until he was ushered to Mason's parked car and the trunk was already open, and the next thing Winn knew the trunk was closing on top of him and he didn't have the energy to stay awake anymore.

The first thing Winn noticed was that his head was killing him, that he was dizzy, and everything felt heavy. He attempted to bring up his arm to shield his eyes from the harsh light before realizing that he couldn't. It was sobering, the way his eyes shot open and he took in his surroundings. Duct tape covered his arms, keeping him secured to the chair with his ankles in the same fashion. He tasted more than felt the duct tape plastered over his face, making it impossible for him to call out or scream. He tested the strength, trying to pull and see if he could get himself free, only stopping when he heard a chuckle from across the room. Mason walked slowly, bringing himself over to Winn and leaning against the dining room table as if this were a normal thing to happen.

"You CIA agents are all the same, testing the strength of something you know you'll never get out of." Winn couldn't help but be silent for a moment, thinking back to his training, trying to figure out what was going to help him in this situation. He had his distress buttons, and he knew that he had one hidden just up his sleeve. It was a design Rowe had been excited about, something that he could activate as long as he could reach it. But apparently he was too obvious, Mason continuing on his rant. "Don't worry, I made sure to take your panic buttons. Can't have you ruining the fun right? Unfortunately Agent Rowe wasn't able to find all your designs, and let me know that you were working on some voice activated ones. While I'm confident that I found everything on you, I can't risk anything going wrong. I'm sure you understand." The words were punctuated with a wave to Winn's face, explaining why he had been gagged in the first place. "I know you're probably asking yourself why I'm doing this. And the answer is simple. The Ring got the information they needed from you, and now you need to be taken out of the equation. It's not personal, just business."

Adri's lips purse, but she doesn't comment. Concentrating, she continues her neat row of stitches.

"That," she says, tongue darting out between her teeth, "is not reassuring." Neither was the late night knock at her door.

Luckily, Adri's a light sleeper. She doesn't always work the night shift in the er, but it's made it her easy to rouse and gain focus.

"I'm sorry it's so late. I didn't know where else to go." (for Ellie) @trcstme

“Better me hurt than someone else.” He looked straight at the agent– Walker. he didn’t know her all that well, usually made it a point to avoid SHIELD agents as much as possible outside of what was necessary. However, he can admit that this particular agent wasn’t one that he found all that irritating. So far. She spoke to him without hesitance or fear lacing her tone, like she was able to separate him from the Winter Soldier in a way some struggled with– he’s never had any of the others intercept his coms to tell him strictly not to do something, nor could he imagine being scolded for his actions by anyone other than the team.

Winn didn't know a lot of things about his life. He never met his birth parents, never really cared to either. He didn't understand how he could be adopted into a family at 2 and then have both his parents leave him by the time he was 11. At least he had Chuck and Ellie, the three siblings forming a bond that was unbreakable. Ellie was protective of her brothers, finding that despite not being related by blood they truly were meant to be together. It was a day of celebration, the day they both got into Stanford. It was the life they had dreamed of. Chuck meeting Jill and dating her. Winn meeting Sarah and the rest was history.

Until Bryce got Chuck kicked out of Stanford. Something Winn still didn't understand. How he could betray his best friend and get him kicked out of his dream school. It was the start of what Winn and Chuck referred to as the 'collapse'. Jill broke up with Chuck, Sarah was gone. The two returned to Ellie unsure of how they were going to move on in their future. Winn thought he was just going to take a gap year, but that year was spanning to five and he was instead working Nerd Herd with Chuck and Morgan at the local Buy More.

For the third time in his life, Winn's entire world was shifted. A birthday email from Sarah turned into government secrets in his brain. Hiding this entire life from Chuck and Ellie. Bryce coming back into his life and following him around the Buy More until he couldn't ignore him anymore. Learning that the girl he loved more than anything was a rogue spy and she was gone. Casey came into his life and wanted to lock him away, but instead Winn was now living this whole other life that he couldn't tell anyone about. No matter how much he wanted to.

And when he was sure life couldn't surprise him anymore, Sarah was alive. They thought they were standing in front of a bomb, Winn and Bryce deep in an argument when the timer went off and they thought they were going to die. And maybe part of Winn did when he realized that Sarah was still alive. He turned on his heel and ran as fast as he could with every intention to never see her again. But that choice wasn't his anymore, not when she was asking to see him and Casey pushed him into the room.

It had been months. Months of being trapped in this house with someone who was so opposite of him that it was almost to the tipping point of him going crazy. Or maybe that was the fact that he didn't have anyone to talk to, that he was trapped in his memories of what Mason had done replaying in his mind. Long after everything had healed, he was still stuck with the mental scars.

Almost worse was the day that he finally realized everyone in his life thought he was dead, the world was moving on without him. The thought hit him like a train, a reminder of when he had been buried underground and the world continued on above him, but at least then it was only a few hours that he had to wonder what others above him were doing. Now it was every single day, the world continued and the longer this went on the longer he realized that he wasn't going to get his life back. The life he had before was gone, he was nothing but a memory to everyone.

He didn't expect Sarah to show up, she hadn't really been around much either. Which would make sense considering that to the world she was living in he was dead. But maybe stealing Casey's phone was the breaking point for her. He knew when they brought him here that he was under a strict no electronics policy, knowing exactly what he could do with them and how it could potentially lead the Ring right to him. At this point he didn't care.