5518/Changeling: Who You Are

Changeling: Who You Are
Date of Scene:	09 October 2018
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	An attempt to brainwash Skye fails, though Karl and Hydra have other uses for her.
Cast of Characters:	Arnim Zola, Quake
Tinyplot:	Changeling

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Arnim Zola has posed:
<<Memories... The drab green walls of St. Agnes' Orphanage, Matt, the other kids... the sisters in their habits... strict rules, lights out at eight...>>

The cold comes first, then the dark, Skye finds herself waking from the drugs in a cold cell, the only light comes from the small sections of bars set high in the cell's iron door. The place smells of dampness and rust. The walls and the rest of the cell are bare, save for the matress she's laying on and a bucket set in one corner.

She doesn't hurt though, but she should, given how many shots she tool. How long was she out? If she searches herself she finds she doesn't have a bruise on her.

Though to search, she'd need to empty her hands, they each clutch something, in one hand there is the slender shape of an arrow, glinting purple in the dim light and the other the cool, round familiar shape of her S.H.I.E.L.D. badge, she has nothing else except the clothing she wore when she was captured.

Quake has posed:
It's weird how those things come to you. She can almost smell the scent of disinfectant and incense. There's a certain slant of morning sunlight, dust motes dancing in it, that would hit her, Sister Mary Margeret banging her yardstick against the metal frames of the cots they all slept in, girls in the girl's dorm; boys in the boy's.

'Wake up you lazy creatures. The devil uses empty hands to his own devices. I expect beds made and your morning prayers done in ten. Breakfast will be served and taken away in twenty. See that you don't dally!'

Only it wasn't sunlight here, but a simple cell. Cold. Dank.

Her fingers refuse to give up their curl about their items. The arrow an anchor. The badge the only thing she has that lets her remember herself.

She should hurt, but she doesn't. And when she tries her voice, it's an odd croak of sound that's unfamiliar to her own ears.

Where is she? And why? And why is there an arrow in her hands? She doesn't remember an arrow. She remembers being shot. Falling. Blows of feet along her body.. and a voice saying stop she'd had enough.. then darkness.

Now here.

She tries again, "Hello?"

Arnim Zola has posed:
Her voice echoes in the dark cell with no answering but the drip of water and the distant squeak of rats.

At least at first, then comes the footfalls as regular as a metronome, a shadow passes in front of the bars, a face in silhouette, but still familiar by it's shape.

The door opens and confirms what Skye suspects, Karl, standing in front of her, that same non-expression on his face as he always seemed to wear. "I wondered when you'd wake," he says, stepping into the room, leaving the door yawning open behind him, there are more cells outside it seems, but no guards. It's just the two of them.

Quake has posed:
Skye forces her eyes to open and shut several times. They're heavy with.. well, it wasn't sleep. Using her feet, and her burden laden hands, she pushes herself into a sitting position on the cot, slow and careful about moving to place her feet flat on the floor.

"You," she says, not using his name. "Nice job back there. Your men are goons."

A smile is forced upon her lips. "The arrow was a nice trick. Giving me a weapon you figure I can't use? Sort of a snide little commentary on my love life?"

Arnim Zola has posed:
Even with movement there's no pain. There's tiredness, sure, but no pain.

Karl nods, "They are unfortunate necessities, and I didn't think you'd accept a more politely offered invitation," he says his lips forming into something like a smile, but there's no life to it, none of it shows in his eyes.

The arrow comment, it earns a tilt of his head, confusion, "I don't know what you're talking about."

Quake has posed:
Skye looks at her hands, curling them and uncurling them. She's sure that she can see the items, but when she thinks on it, she can't feel them. It's like her body. She can't feel that, either. She should be able to, shouldn't she?

"Of course you don't," Skye retorts acidly. "And you're right. I'd have refused. If you think this was any better, you'd be wrong, though."

Arnim Zola has posed:
<<The foster homes... the stolen scotch, the broken decanter... the green walls of St. Agnes... Mrs. Brody, calling her mom... the green walls of St. Agnes... dreaming of escape.>>

The memories come with a subtle pressure in Skye's mind, something foreign, unwanted..

As for the badge and the arrow both feel as real as anything else around her.

Karl smiles one of those alien smiles, "Oh, I think this way will get me all I need, one way or another, but I wanted to give you a chance to change your mind. We can do so much together Skye, even more now that I truly understand what you are," he says, there's a subtle shift in accent there, the hint of something Germanic. "You can help change the world, that is what you want isn't it, to change the world? That's why you joined the Rising Tide, accepted SHIELD. Their way is flawed, broken, inefficient, I can offer you so many more opportunities."

Quake has posed:
It's all images sumperimposed upon one another..

The pale light framing Karl, coming around him like a halo...

She'd believed in angels then. And God. Had prayed even. Every day, she'd prayed. Several times a day. Every prayer time they were given, Skye would bow her head and ask for one thing; one thing only: parents.

Looking around at the other misfits at St. Agnes - the ones nobody wanted; the ones nobody cared about - she'd wanted to believe that she was different. That she was lovable. That someone out there was looking for a girl just like her..

Only she was tainted, wasn't she? Her blood touched by the unspeakable.

Wait, that had come after. Long after. She was confusing the story. (only a dry part of her mind laughed a tiny bit, a small, bitter thing. Someone had been looking for her. Only he was part of the problem now, wasn't he? Cal.)

The scotch. She'd remembered that. The last foster home. One in a string after St. Agnes. Before they'd sent her to the group home for unmanageable youth. She wanted them to think she'd drunk it. She couldn't remember why now. Only at the time it had seemed important.

The glass of the decanter shone so prettily across the floor... She remembered now. Mrs. Brody. She'd called her mom. Only she didn't want Skye. Just like all the others, there was.. 'something just isn't working out right, dear. You'll understand some day. We'll just pack your things, and tommorrow they'll be here for you bright and early'. Only she didn't see the odd glint in Mrs. Brody's eyes. Or understand that strained and unusual note to her voice.

They'd returned her to St. Agnes that time. A stopgap measure while they found a more permanent placement.

Mrs. Brody had been her last foster home.

Skye swims up through a fog of memories, wondering why the walls of the cell keep wanting to be green. Such an odd shade of green. Flickering in and out from the sterile grey that she knows that they are.

"Rising Tide was wrong," Skye says, fingers tightening around the items in her hands. Willing them to take substance that she can feel. She backs up on the cot, wary.

Arnim Zola has posed:
Karl steps forward, reaching out a hand. "True, they were, wrong and mere shadows of what they could have been if they'd had the skill and the discipline to be more than children screaming at a world they do not understand. True change requires belief, sacrifice, to be part of something bigger than one's self, and the Rising Tide was only concerned with themselves. As I said, children."

Karl continues, his hand still extended. "SHIELD too, they're a step in the right direction, but a half-measure, they have discipline but a flawed purpose, they protect but they do not command, and so they must fight over and over to protect their charges, most often from themselves. They lack the strength to divest themselves of conventional morality and do what is truly needed to protect and advance mankind," he says. "You deserve to be part of something more than mere janitors, cleaning up mankind's messes, but something bigger, stronger, a chance to use what you are now and what you can become for something glorious, you just need to say, yes," he says his eyes glancing down at his extended hand.

Quake has posed:
Skye instinctively flinches back from that hand, her feet no longer on the floor, but pushing her back.. back.. back into the corner of her cot, pressing herself tightly into the nook of the wall.

Part of her mind screams she shouldn't be cowering away, but fighting forwards, pushing past Karl, trying to escape, only that part of her brain doesn't have control. It's not in charge.

Her fingers curl tighter into her palms. So tightly that she can't help but wonder why the arrow doesn't snap, or why the badge isn't cutting into her palms. And still she can't feel them there. Can't feel her own fingertips pressing halfmoons into her flesh.

Her arms wrap to her chest, pulling those talismans tighter to herself.

"Nooo," she protests. "You're wrong. It isn't like that. SHIELD isn't like that. They're.." Words catch in her throat. They're terrifying words. Words that have failed her so often in the past that she refused to believe in them anymore. They were the words that had her running away and living on the streets. The words that had pushed her into the Rising Tide to begin with.

The words that had May on that roof, telling her that she'd arrange it so that Skye could leave. If the girl was that unhappy, she would arrange it so that Skye could leave - no repercussions to her actions. Just a straight walk to freedom.

They were the words that had Nat telling Clint 'yes that means you're dating' when the two of them had fumbled around an obvious attraction at that bar, unable to recognize in one another the spark that demanded they take a chance. The chance they'd have danced around for months further, and likely have burnt out through stupidity, and seeing their relationship for nothing more than physcial attraction. Words that Nat believed in, and used, because she cared about Clint, even if she was not so happy with Skye.

They were the words that had Fury backing her all the way through every action she'd made, and every intuitive leap she'd taken at SHIELD, finding herself more and more confident and secure in the knowledge that not only did she belonng here, but that she was good. Very good.

They were the words that had her asking Clint to move in, recognizing that there was no difference in what they were already doing and taking that final move. The same words that had them moving into Greenich Village. And inviting their friends - their FRIENDS - over and making their home (a HOME!) a place of safety and welcome where so few of them had none of that.

They were the words that had come to define her.

"No," she says again, this time more firmly. "No. Rising Tide was wrong. But SHIELD is my family. I won't let you take that from me."

In her hands, a press of metal - just a thin line - and the faint give of wood meant to bend through the air through flight.

Arnim Zola has posed:
Clenching the badge and the arrow brings pain, but not in her hands, not where her mind says it would be, but on her body, places bruised by rubber bullets and steel toed boots. The pain is fleeting, and comes with a flash of light, the sense of another place.

<<The streets... hunger... learning computers from whoever would teach her...her first big score, buying the van... Miles... The Tide... Genus... A blown hack... Men in suits... a bag dropped over her head>>

"They are not your family," Karl says, lowering his hand and sitting on the bed, his expressionless voice pitched low to approximate something soothing. He falls short.

"Your family are monsters, I know, I've met them, SHIELD knows that too. They hid you from them, kept you alone, why? To protect you? Or because they were afraid? Afraid of what you could be. Is it merely coincidence that they only came for you when you had developed skills they could use," Karl shakes his head.

"That is not family. You are just a pawn, something to extract value from until they no longer need you. I know, I was where you were once. An acquisition, taken in for my brain, my knowledge, but I was never part of them, they were never family, they let my Ilsa die. They'll do it to you too, fail you, betray you, and like me you will be forced to save yourself. It's a horrible journey, let me tell you, but you can save yourself that pain if you simply take my hand."

Quake has posed:
"Not my family," Skye echoes.

Were they her family? She knows she's had those same thoughts over and over again. How they threatened her with prison if she didn't join with them. How she'd had that same question in her mind when Fury handed her her file and had said he'd known who she was when they'd picked her up. She'd convinced herself it was the blood tests that had revealed who she was.. but they had kept her from ever having a home..

Cal was a monster.

That fleeting edge of pain makes it hard to take a breath. She can feel every spot where her ribs are cracked, and a sharp pain that suggests one might be broken. It's fleeting, though, barely registering before those doubts fill her mind and that ethereal numbness sets back in.

She has to look at her hands to reassure herself that she's holding those items.

Cal was a monster...

May was going to help her leave, though. May might lie for the job, but she'd never lied to Skye about anything important. Skye didn't know why she knew that, but she did. May, who had paid for that hotel room in China so that she and Clint could have a *good* memory to carry through the chaos that was to come in her life. May who had accepted the announcement that Skye wasn't fully human, as though she had expected some other horrible admission from the young woman's lips. May, who had time and time again shared with Skye how to be a good Agent. How to be a better person. And who had let the younger woman in under her defenses.

Cal was a monster..

SHIELD had kept her from finding a home. But Cal was a monter who tore people limb from limb, and barely heard reason. He raged and was furious. He was manipulative (to get to you, her brain answered) and without..

No, that wasn't true. He wasn't without remorse. He showed true sorrow for things he'd done. Skye wasn't sure how to justify that in her mind, the terrible he'd done, beside the true caring he'd obviously felt for her. The fact that he'd helped others.. perhaps not selflessly, but helped them regardless.. to get to her. He could show reason and kindness.

Skye didn't know what to make of that.

And Clint - not just Clint, but especially Clint - had accepted her for herself. Hadn't treated her like she was just a set of skills. All those laughing moments, first in her suite at the Trisk, and then later in Greenich. Those moments, all of those moments, told her that there was more. That she'd been not only accepted, but looked to and value for who and what she was.

"You're wrong," she protests again, her back hurting against the wall, breathing hard again. Her legs and arms feeling heavy, and hot and cold by turns. She could hear the creeeaaak of the arrow in her palm, held so tightly now that the thing threatened to snap there. Her badge a full on line cutting into it, forming a bridge between heart line and head line across it. "No. They're family. They didn't let her die. They wouldn't."

Not if they could help it. Skye knew that, felt it even - hadn't they done all they could to protect her from.. not only Cal, but Hydra? ... didn't Karl work for Hydra?

The walls continue to flicker.

Arnim Zola has posed:
The arrow creaks, the badge digs into her flesh, but neither break nor vanish, they bear up under the pressure and refuse to yield. They bring with them that pain in her body, the shifting of the broken rib, the sore welts on her arms and back. The light too is there and is blinding.

There are voices now, faint, half-heard. "...waking up... increase the intensity..."

Then they fade again as she sinks back into the darkness of the cell. Things were different though, Karl was close his hand unnaturally cool against her face as he grips her chin. "Listen to me," he insists. "They let her die, they will let you die too if it serves their ends. You are nothing to them, a monster, a thing to be used, studied and thrown away. Just one more monster in a family of them. Even those who won't betray you, how long until you or your father hurts them?" there is something like concern on his face but at the same time he seems barely human, like a dancing on the string of something monsterous. "It doesn't have to be that way, just take my hand and you will be free of all of it."

Quake has posed:
Skye absently wonders who is waking up. She isn't aware, yet, that it's her, but something bothers her about the phrase. She knows it should bother her more, and struggles to figure out why.

Her hands continue to press about the items she holds, willing them to be real. Willing them to make it clearer whats wrong with this all. Why it's not making any sense.

The arrow bends further.

Where Karl grabs her face, she feels his fingers not only as cool, but each digit individually, like he were pressing on all the hurting bits of her body at once. It's a strange juxataposition to the cool.

She's sure now that she has a broken rib. It doesn't just hurt to breathe, she can feel the rasping of each breath, and hear the faint catch with each jagged stab as she inhales. It gives her something to focus on other than that cool hand.

His words.. they make no sense.

No, they do. Only.. Only she's seen that look before. Intimately so. Recently so. She'd seen that look in Cal's eyes. The look of someone who was obsessed with an iea to the point of not caring about anything else. To the point of lies and harm and..

She knows what Cal is, and what he can and will do. But she also knows that he cares about her in his weird little way. She's not sure what that is going to mean, but she knows it will be okay. Somehow it will be okay. Karl's face before her, though, makes her fear. In the pit of her stomach, there is growing terror. A feeling of being trapped.

She can almost feel the shackles on her wrists and ankles, the restraints on her chest.

The wildness in Karl's eyes makes her recoil ever further, until she feels sandiched into the wall, a prisoner under his scrutiny.

"No," Skye insists. "You're wrong."

And when she says it, she feels a strength to her limbs. A rush of heated pain running through her body. Throbbing in her head. Making the world swirl in front of her face as it feels like parts of her are simultaneously on fire even as they are beyond icy cold.

The badge in her palm cuts through the lines there. A singular slice that brings a new wash of pain, and a sudden vision of brightness around her. Of a room that is neither dark, nor cold. People milling about, peering at her.

The arrow in her other hand strains at breaking point, then *snaps!* stabbing through her palm in two places.

"No!" she gasps, knowing that she will never grab that hand. Seeking either oblivion or awareness. Knowing now, who she is.

Arnim Zola has posed:
Skye wakes to bright lights and pain. It all rushes back at once, the bruises, the broken ribs, the tight restraints on her arms and legs, the feel of something searing hot set around her head like a tiara, each point of contact feeling like a hot soldering iron pressed against her skull. He heart is beating fast, her lungs feel like they're on fire.

There are voices again, and rapid beeping.

"She's coming out, give her something to calm down or she's going to have a stroke," a voice demands.

A shape appears out of the light clad in a black coat the tentacled skull of Hydra emblazoned on in white against the darkness of the background. There is a prick against Skye's arm and a coolness rushes through her, her heart slowing, her lungs easing.

The burning at her head eases too, and the voices burble on at the edge of her hearing giving her a moment to adapt to her new surroundings. The memories come then, not forced, or pulled but naturally, half-remembered moments of the journey to this place, flashes of a boat, a tower in the sea, long hallways, and then this lab.

Quake has posed:
It's a weird sensation. She's numb now, only this time, Skye knows she can feel. It's not that dreamlike quality where she knows she /should/ feel and cant. Bit of her feel wrong, but not *wrong*. They hurt, but they don't *hurt*

She knows they've given her something to ease the pain, and she' grateful, but it doesn't change the fact that they're Hydra.

"Not going to give in." The words are a struggle and seem to come from far away, but they're in her voice now. And there are none of the strange back thoughts and odd movements in and out of reality - she knows now that the memories she was experiencing were just that. And that the badge and arrow were... she wasn't sure.

Figments of her imagination? Her last grasp on who and what she believed in?

It didn't matter, only they'd saved her. They'd let her remain Skye, and not become one of them. A walking, talking saluting, mindlessly following peon.

Arnim Zola has posed:
The badge and the arrow are gone, but whether it was them or her own fingers digging into her flesh, there's a dull in ache in both hands in memory of them.

There is murmuring beyond the edges of the light, hushed voices, then finally, a face appears, Karl's, impassive as ever, looking down, he reaches out to take the metal tiara off Skye's head, a web of circuits and wires, it scratches against her skin.

"Yes, I am afraid you're right," he says almost sadly. "I had hoped you would comply. It would have been much better if you had been willing to join us."

He sets the device aside. "There is so much that could have been accomplished."

He pauses with what seems like genuine regret, then sighs, "However, we still have a use for you, I have been waiting to see a transformation for seventy years, so if your skills will not serve Hydra, then we perhaps the secrets inside your DNA will."

Quake has posed:
"I am not Hydra," Skye hisses wearirly "I can't believe you ever thought.."

There is about where the rest of what he says filters through.

"What DNA? I mean secrets. What secrets?" Only she knows what secrets. What she's confused about is how he means to use them. "What.. what are you planning on doing with me?"

Because the first thoughts she has are pretty brutal ones, and involve involuntary use of her blood and body bits to explore and figure out what makes her tick. Not only is Hydra not known for their pleasantries (they put bombs inside people's heads to make them comply, after all), but if Hydra had a crystal all along, then why were they looking for..

"Oh."

Arnim Zola has posed:
"I allowed myself to hope," Karl says of Skye and Hydra.

He doesn't answer those other questions, they both know the answers, he just stares flatly as she works through it.

"Yes," he confirms when she gets there, to what he had in mind. "Thanks to the notes we recovered from your father's office, and with materials I gathered years ago, we should be able to replicate a crystal. I am very much looking forward to watching the effect, from what I have heard from those who've gone through it, it is quite remarkable." The regret of a moment before simply seems to end, draining away like it was never really there. Replaced with a sort of casual curiosity.

He nods to someone outside of the light as he steps back from the table.

Quake has posed:
Skye purses her lips together and shakes her head. She won't beg. She won't plead. She's not sure if what Karl is proposing will work, but the possibility exists. However, she won't give him the satisfaction of expressing her fears.

"It won't change my mind. I'll remember this, though. When I turn out to be a monster, I /will/ remember this."

Arnim Zola has posed:
Karl shakes his head sadly. "I am sure you will," he says without fear.

He jerks his head upwards to the men coming in from the beyond the light, the same ones who brought Skye here.

"Take her to her cell, but carefully, we'll need her intact for the process." And with that Karl walks away.

Quake has posed:
Skye would say more if she could, but at this point, shock, drugs, and being moved have caused her to blissfully pass out, leaving her unaware of her current fate for the moment.