VITALITY ↝ B. BARNES [1]

[6]

Rustling the covers as she turned on her left side with a small huffing sound, Elysia closed her eyes tightly, willing her mind to shut off so she could try to manage at least a couple hours of sleep before everyone else was awake for the day. Instead, her brain continued to run thousands of miles each minute with the events of the night before, the image of the HYDRA soldier's gun pointed between her eyebrows flashing in her vision each time she closed her eyes. Coupled with the energy surge she'd received from the generator and the high alert she'd felt running into the compound to save her friends, and mixed in with the deal she'd made with the devil by agreeing to stay at the compound for the summer, she knew sleep wouldn't be coming anytime soon.

Whenever Elysia had envisioned what the summer would bring her, she'd seen it as the time to map out the days that lay ahead: finding an actual internship that would take her on while she worked on the last few credits of her graduate degree, rather than the one she'd made up in a quick text to her friends explaining why she was leaving town. Along with that might come bar hopping with a few friends after grueling weeks of work, and maybe finding a position in her dream career in the process. Whenever she'd thought about her plans, Tony breaking into her apartment and throwing that all out the window in the process had never once crossed her mind. On the contrary, part of her had begun to wonder if he even remembered she existed, every time the Avengers had made the opening story on the news and his picture flashed on her TV screen.

But now, there was a chance she might never be able to go back to the way things were before.

Sighing and sitting up in bed, Elysia pulled down the covers, swinging her legs over the end of the mattress as she rose to her feet. She quickly pulled on her shoes and grabbed a sweatshirt, pulling it over her head before tying her hair up into a ponytail and wandering out of the small apartment. Despite the lingering ache in her side and Dr. Cho's orders to take it easy, Elysia stepped into the elevator and pressed the button that would take her downstairs to the training floor, crossing her arms over her chest as she watched the descending numbers on the screen.

If she couldn't repress her abilities forever, she might as well put them to good use and figure out how to control them again.

Elysia stepped out into the empty training floor, the lights illuminating the room at her entrance. She wandered over to one of the practice dummies, the sparks igniting in her hands again, and tried to will herself to summon more than she'd sent at Steve that first day of training, or even the small shock she'd given Tony, but to her surprise, the electricity stayed within her fingertips, unwilling to cross the line of sending it all out at once.

"Come on," Elysia murmured, hands splayed out in front of her in the direction of the dummy, though a small spark simply fizzled out just before reaching the figure. "Come on, come on,"

Elysia continued her attempts, even throwing punches at the dummy in attempts to transfer the electric shock, her frustration growing more and more with each failed attempt. Back at the generator, the electricity had started to welcome her, as if they were one, but now she was out on her own without the faintest clue of how to use them, even as her own screams from that night years ago echoed in her head. She shut her eyes tightly, stepping away from the dummy with frustrated tears filling her eyes as she forced herself to take a deep breath, though it was as if an unconscious barrier had formed inside her, preventing the spark from truly coming forward.

Giving up, she left the dummy in the training center and entered the elevator once more. Although, rather than pressing the button that would take her back to the living quarters, she instead found herself pressing the one that would lead her back to the interrogation room, and before she knew it, she was back in the observation area made completely out of glass, the Winter Soldier staring back at her with a confused expression on his face as he studied her, watching her every move.