Chapter Text
You come out of the peacefulness of darkness to bright light, yelling voices, and excruciating pain echoing throughout your body. You hear voices telling you to wake up, but it’s just too much. Everything is just too much.
Is this hell? Is this where people go after living the kind of life that you lived? What happened to the peaceful pleasure of darkness?
“Just hold on, Mrs. Hammer.” The low-pitched voice, male, tells you with what a part of your mind registers as soothing but it’s the words that have you react instinctively.
You jerk away from the careful touch, lashing out with limbs that move sluggishly. “No! Don’t. Not again. No.” You try to yell the pleas, to turn them into orders, but the voice that sounds like your own is nowhere near being assertive.
You are begging. You thought you wouldn’t have to beg again. That was part of the path, right? Help…help Not-Wilson. Help yourself. Help…
“You have to be still, ma’am.” The voice comes back with hands holding you down. “We have to stop the bleeding.” The man’s voice raises to drown out the other voices that keep fighting for dominance in the background. “Fetal distress. Where’s the ob-gyn? This baby is too early to be born.”
You hear the words…but the hands. Different memories overlap, and you keep struggling against the holds. You have to get away. You have to. Being tied down…No. No.
“What’s going on?” Another voice…one that you recognize; Not-Wilson, Peter, calls out as the first voice that you can recognize as ‘not threat’. “Is she going to be okay?”
“Blows to the stomach…”
“Broken rib…”
“Blood loss…”
“Come on, Peter.” Another voice, one that you heard a lifetime ago flirting with a woman who had more willpower than pretty much anyone in that room, comes through. “We have to give the doctors room…”
“But Stark…” Not-Wilson, Peter, sounds so young there. He really is a kid. He didn’t deserve to be put through what Hammer put him through. What…what you put him through by not acting sooner.
“You need to be looked at too, kid.” Stark tells him and you fight to stay in this world of bright lights and fading voices. You fight the peaceful pull of the darkness that had curled you in its careful hold. You have to know…
You yank again at the hands holding your feet together and fight down the panic causing your thoughts and words to jumble into a strange whirlwind of necessity and terror. “Peter. Not-Wilson. Kid…is he okay? Are we…Justin? Master?”
“Sh.” Another voice, this one you think is female based on how high the voice is, tries to lull you into some type of calm. “Don’t worry about that, Mrs. Hammer. Just relax, okay? Everything will be alright. Just relax.”
‘Just relax, pet. This won’t hurt much…’
‘Stop fighting. If you just…ugh. Yeah. Like that.’
You know the woman’s words were supposed to calm you, but all it did was echo with a lifetime of someone so much stronger than yourself telling not to fight as they did what they wanted to you. You yank an arm free and something crunches under your fist. The hand holding down your foot loosens enough for you to jerk it free and land into something soft. Pain slows down your reaction time and the needle jabbing into your arm has you flinch.
The sudden jerking reminds you of the wounds to your abdomen and you let out a cry. You try to curl in on the pain but more hands straighten you out. More hands hold you down. More hands move you like a doll. They pull at clothing that sticks your skin and pulls as they take it off. Scissors. You’d recognize that sound of sliding metal almost as easily as you can recognize Hammer’s voice change right before he lashes out.
“You have to calm down, Mrs. Hammer.” The woman talks and what she called you…No. Just no. You lash out as much as you can with all of the hands keeping you in position.
Your lips curl back in a snarl as straps are attached in place of their hands. “I’m nothing of his.” You bite out the words, twisting your arm enough to make you scream at how you are pulling to your body’s limit to get out.
To be free.
“Get out of here, Diane.” The male voice from earlier orders, his face vaguely coming into focus in front of you even with the darkness seeming to crowd in to snuff out the light. “Listen, we are trying to help you. We can’t do that with you fighting us, alright? Just…just let us help you.”
You try to see the sincerity on his face, but you can just barely make dark features as the darkness whirls even more to encase everything. You need to stay away. Sleep isn’t safe. No. Sleep isn’t safe. There are too many hands. Too many…
Just too many. You have to stay awake. You have to…