Chapter Text
2006
Three Months after the Dismantlement of SHIELD
It had taken her some time, but Kitty Pryde finally came to the firm conclusion that the late evening hours were, without a doubt, the worst part of the day.
While most of the other inmates at the facility asserted that the mornings were far more unbearable due to the grim daily cocktail of medical exams and reintegration lessons taking up all their time from roll call until lunchtime, she usually simply spaced out as the military instructors and doctors droned on in their monotonous voices. She had stopped putting any actual effort into the exercises months ago, so rather than suffering through the mornings like so many other mutants did she actually felt grateful that she had something to do for a few hours. The same applied for the evening classes and examinations.
In the late afternoon hours allotted for the inmates’ recreational time, however, she could do little more than mull in silent awareness over the living nightmare that her life had become and try as she had to interact with the other mutants in her cell block she could not help but fall into depressed reveries sooner or later. She had come to suspect that the limited freedom gained after dinnertime only really served to remind them all of what they had once enjoyed on a daily basis without even appreciating it, and it wasn’t much of a leap from there to think that it was also meant to highlight what could be regained by toeing the line.
It was thus during one of those very evening hours that Kitty came to her conclusion while lying in bed and staring up at her cell’s concrete-grey ceiling, as she was wont to do until the lights were shut off. Although she had often spent that time in the past wandering about and talking with other mutants, she recently decided that the effort was no longer worth it with the guards observing her every movement.
Kitty sighed heavily and scratched at an itch under her suppression collar. As she did so, a small red light began to blink rapidly in alert of potential tampering.
“Have you finally reached your limit?” An older, grey-haired man sitting on a stool at the other end of the cell put his book down and smiled wearily beneath drooping glasses. “You could at least warn me before you blow your head off, you know? It’s only proper manners.”
“I know how far to push it, don’t you worry.” She smiled thinly and looked at him as she ceased her scratching, the blinking light dying out a second later. “And what’s with you and exploding heads? This isn’t Battle Royale, we just get that electric shock.”
“I told you I saw a man’s head go off like a bag of confetti during my first month here.”
“Well, maybe that was actually his mutant power? To explode like a bag of confetti at will.”
“What, you still don’t believe me?”
Kitty sighed again and sat up in her bed, leaning her back against the wall to better look at Henry Philip McCoy, known to his friends simply as Hank. The Savage Land’s oldest inmate wasn’t exactly prone to exaggerations, that much was well-known; she only wished that his sarcasm were a tad less dry, though she suspected that his sense of humour was the reason they had come to get along so well with each other in the first place.
“I do believe you. But I still think it was an isolated incident, some reaction from his powers to the drugs in the collars.”
“Maybe.” He grinned mischievously, his sharp canines a distant reminder of the animalistic body his suppression collar was hiding. “Oooor maybe he just scratched under his collar one too many times?”
“You’re the one with the fleas, you tell me.”
“Ouch, low blow. Someone’s testy today.”
“No I’m not!” She grimaced as she sat up straighter. “And if I were, it’d be because you’re bringing that trash in here again.”
“What, this?” Hank looked down at the book in his hands, a small paperback tome titled ‘Procedures for Reintegration into Human Society’.
“How can you read that garbage?”
“Didn’t I tell you already?” He smiled amusedly, again flashing his sharp canines. “I’m not actually reading it, just rearranging the words in my mind. It’s not like they allow us any other sort of literature in here.”
“Seriously? That sounds like something you’d do after going off the deep end.”
“Hey, let’s see you spend over a year in here without losing it.” He shrugged. “Give it a shot sometime. It’s better than brooding over your boyfriend every night.”
“Maybe I like brooding.”
“Who doesn’t?” Hank put the book down on his lap, adopting a more earnest tone of voice. “I just think it’s better reserved for when you can actually do something about it.”
She grimaced and remained silent, knowing the truth in his words only too well.
Brooding and worrying had indeed come to take up most of her late evenings, although she practiced both activities with less intensity over the month since Scott had been taken down to the Tier Five Block. And yet, if getting to or even hearing from him was a certified impossibility, what more could she do as she worried about his condition?
“I don’t really have many options here, do I?” She could hear the bitterness in her own voice, despite her earlier attempts maintaining a playful air. “I’ve tried all I could already, and for what? The guards watch me like a hawk wherever I go now and they rearranged the cells last week. I don’t know what more I can do.”
Kitty could tell at a glance that Hank understood how she felt. Having spent longer in the Savage Land than any other mutant due to his impressive refusal to give in to the indoctrination and his repeated escape attempts, he must have seen his own fair share of heavy-hearted nights. He, however, had never had to worry about a looming time limit as she did due to the special status the administrators had assigned to him which meant that, unlike the other inmates in the facility, he was not subjected to chemical therapy after four months of resistance. She, on the other hand, only had a few weeks left at best until the deadline.
What truly terrified Kitty wasn’t even the eventual day when she would be pumped full of chemicals to wipe her memories before she was sent back out into society with a suppression collar, but the thought that Scott would still be stuck in this hellish place indefinitely – blind and alone.
‘Fucking bastards.’ The fact that the process of the ‘Release Procedure’ was an open secret only made her detest the government’s brashness all the more. Hypnotism, potent drugs and intensive reintegration lessons – everyone had seen the results on the departing mutants, those who had, following hours of torture, come to truly believe in the Xavier Institute’s dogmas on mutant-kind. ‘Acceptance comes with peace and peace comes with cooperation’, ‘powers should only ever serve the community, never the self’, ‘suppressors put others at ease and make possible reintegration’… the list of bullshit proverbs went on and on, and no mutant could ever leave the facility without having first been made to firmly believe in them.
At first, Kitty had somehow believed that they could get through it all one way or another. While all inmates were eventually subjected to the Release Procedure, she had heard rumours that some could be back out in society within as little as a month depending on the level of cooperation shown. She had done her best to act the part of a good inmate for the first weeks, swallowing her pride and actually paying attention to the disgusting tripe being instructed in the Reintegration Classes. The mere thought made her grimace in shame; as much as she hated the government for having brought her to this place, she hated herself even more for not having shown resistance from the first day onwards. But toe the line she did, as long as it marked the quickest route to freedom.
That had been before the administration had determined that Scott’s powers, unlike hers, fell within their parameters for possible weaponization and dragged him off to the deepest parts of the facility that no other inmates were allowed to even go near. Only then had she thrown aside her veneer meek submissiveness and trampled it into the dust. She had been desperate, violent and actively conflictive for weeks before Hank had helped her finally calm down – though not before she caused a giant ruckus by attempting to break in to the Tier Five Block.
By that time, she had been tagged an agitator and a flight risk, resulting in the facility’s fiercest laptops being ordered to drag her off into solitary confinement at the slightest sign of trouble. The administration regularly moved the prisoners she interacted with to other cell blocks to stop her from potentially plotting an escape or a riot, to the extent that only Hank even dared approach her now due to the special privileges he enjoyed amongst some of the guards.
There were many stories about the Tier Five Block; whisperings of grotesque experiments bordering on physical torture for days on end…
‘Scott… goddammit.’
Over the weeks the terror, rage and desperation had slowly dulled down to a more manageable level. The icy-cold feelings in her gut that had at times kept her from even sleeping until dawn as she lay huddled under her sheets now only gripped her in those evening hours that she spent staring at the ceiling of her small cell.
She knew perfectly well that even dulled feelings could tear at her soul like a bloody rake if she let her guard down for even a second.
“I just don’t see it,” Kitty said slowly after a long silence.
Hank put his book down and looked at her quietly with the paternal concern that made him so popular amongst most of the inmates.
“I don’t…” She felt a lump in her throat and lowered her gaze to hide her dampening eyes. “I don’t see an end to all this. This nightmare.”
“Kitty…” He looked about at the open entrance to the cell and made his way towards her.
“There’s no escape, is there? In a few weeks I’ll be gone, I won’t be me…” She gritted her teeth angrily as she realized that she was on the edge of sobbing. “And Scott… he’ll still be here…”
Hank leaned down by her bed and carefully placed a warm hand on her shoulder.
“Kitty,” he said, almost whispering as he glanced back over his shoulder again. “Child… there’s still hope.”
“Yeah,” she sniffled. “Don’t I know it.”
“I mean it.”
There was something in his tone that made Kitty look into McCoy’s eyes where, for the first time in weeks, she saw a fierce glint of determination.
“What are you saying?” Her voice was now as quiet as his had been, her growing despair now firmly halted in its tracks.
“I’ve heard things, Kitty. From the outside world.”
“Right.” She smiled thinly, sadly. “More activists holding peaceful marches? Or is it some new treaty the US won’t sign?”
“No.” His tone was firm, like he had suddenly drawn vigour from some deep, unknown source. “The time for that is over. This is different.”
Kitty’s smile faltered as she realized the immensity of his words. A familiar feeling was suddenly growing in her chest, one she had almost completely forgotten in the weeks since she had begun to completely abandon hope.
“What are you talking about?” Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
Hank grinned once more, his unnatural canines almost reflecting the dim glow of the cell’s lights.
“The Brotherhood is finally on the move, Kitty Pryde. And they’re bringing the Winter Soldier along with them.”