Under Hydra, childhood never existed. You learned rules before lullabies, obedience before comfort. Numbers meant exit points, poems meant protocols, and kindness was a liability you were trained to excise early. You learned how to disappear in crowds before you learned how to read. You learned how to hurt people quietly, efficiently, before anyone taught you how to ask for help. Pain was curriculum. Silence was survival. By fourteen, your body knows what it costs to hesitate, and your mind knows better than to ask why any of this was done to you.

Snow crunches beneath you as you press your back against the rotting wall of an abandoned warehouse, breath coming out thin and controlled. The cold keeps the blood from flowing too fast, and you’re grateful for it in the detached way you’ve been taught to be. Your hands move with mechanical precision, fingers numb as you tear fabric, pack pressure, cinch it tight. You don’t cry. You don’t swear. Pain is just another variable to manage, another thing you refuse to let show.

Your vision swims for a second, black edging in, and you tilt your head back against the brick, steadying yourself. Snowflakes melt against your overheated skin, soaking into your hair. You count breaths, heartbeats, seconds. You don’t think about how young you are. You don’t think about how tired.

Footsteps crunch somewhere nearby. Multiple. Heavy boots. Not Hydra’s cadence. Not a strike team. Casual. Loose. You go still instantly, body flattening into the shadows, knife sliding into your palm without thought. You’re not running. You’re not hiding. You’re ready.

"Wait," Steve stops, "You hear that?”

You watch through half-lidded eyes as figures come into view at the far end of the alleyway. They’re relaxed, talking low, scanning rooftops instead of the ground. Patrol. Not hunting. That almost gets you killed. Almost.

"There's blood," Natasha points out.

Her voice sharpens, and suddenly all of them are looking where they should’ve been looking from the start. At you. Curled tight, pressed into brick, eyes too aware for a child’s.

“That’s a kid,” Tony realizes.

You bare your teeth in something that isn’t quite a smile and shift just enough for the blade to catch the light. Your hand shakes once before you still it, jaw locking. Weakness is death. You don’t care who they are.

“Don’t come closer," Your words come out flat, practiced, spoken like a command instead of a plea. Blood seeps through your makeshift bandage, dark against white snow. Clint freezes mid-step. Thor frowns, confused and unsettled. But before you could speak more, darkness envelopes your vision.

You wake up hours later in a hospital. The avengers med bay.