Part 2: First Waking
Location: Avengers Medical Bay – Secure Room | Late Evening
Riven stirred again.
Not from a dream — there were no dreams anymore. Only flickers of memory like glass shards under his eyelids. Cold steel. Screams. Blood. Smoke.
His body hurt. Deep, slow ache. Like someone had poured molten iron into his bones and let it cool.
His eyes opened. One at a time.
The room was too clean. The ceiling sterile white, humming with soft lights. No chains. No needles. No alarms.
No screaming children.
He sat up fast — too fast. A pulse of dizziness slapped him sideways, and he winced, teeth clenched. Tubes snapped off his arm as his hand gripped the edge of the bed like it might vanish if he let go.
Then came the sound.
A sharp hiss.
From the other side of a thick glass wall, a security door unsealed, and two figures stepped through.
Steve Rogers, tall and calm, his shield not on him but his posture just as ready.
Natasha Romanoff, poised, arms crossed, face unreadable but not unkind.
Behind them, the glass softened — one-way becoming two-way. He could see the room outside now. More faces.
Wanda. Sam. Vision. Tony.
All watching. Not with fear. Not exactly. But caution.
Riven said nothing.
He slowly peeled the rest of the IV off, fingers trembling not from fear, but from restraint. His muscles ached. The aftershock of years still hummed under his skin.
Steve stepped forward first. Calm voice. No sudden movements.
> "Riven… That's your name, right? You're safe now. You're not in that place anymore."
Riven didn't reply. His eyes scanned every corner of the room. One door. One vent. Two exits. Three guards minimum. The voice inside him — the one that kept him alive — whispered tactics.
He stood up from the bed. Still barefoot. Still in loose white clothes someone had changed him into. His knees nearly gave. He caught himself.
Natasha took a single step forward. Her voice low. Soft, but not pitying.
> "We saw the footage. All of it. What they did to you… what they made you watch."
His jaw clenched.
Wanda stepped closer to the glass now. Her eyes locked with his. And this time… her voice echoed in his head. Not telepathy — just weight.
> "You didn't lose yourself. You fought. You saved them."
His voice came out raw. Hoarse.
> "They shot a kid… in front of me. And laughed."
Everyone went still.
> "Then they sedated one. Whatever it was… poison maybe. I don't know. Blood came out his mouth. They watched him choke."
> "And then they burned one. Not even clean. Like they wanted me to see it. Just enough to make him scream."
He stared at them. Not blinking.
> "You think I saved those kids? I wasn't saving anyone."
He stepped closer to the glass now. Just a few feet from Wanda.
> "I was killing them. One by one. Every fucker in that facility. And they enjoyed it. They made me scream. They'd watch me break, laugh when I cried. They used pain like it was entertainment. Like I wasn't even human.
He blinked hard, but his voice cracked anyway.
They'd take the kids sometimes. Strap them down, inject them, electrocute them — just to see what would happen. Some of them screamed until they couldn't anymore. Some didn't come back. And I couldn't stop it.
A tear slipped down his cheek as he spoke. He didn't wipe it away. Didn't even flinch.
He looked away, jaw clenching so hard the muscle twitched.
You don't come out of that clean. You come out soaked in it. The blood, the hate, the noise. I didn't get free. I escaped. There's a difference."
The words cracked in his throat. Not from pride. Not from threat. But from something brittle. Like a man trying to hold his own mind together with his bare hands.
Then his breath shuddered.
He sank down against the wall, finally sitting. Elbows on his knees. Eyes burning. A tear rolled down without permission. Then another.
> "I begged them. Told them to shoot me instead. Over and over. They never listened. So I made them."
No one said a word.
Not Steve. Not Tony. Not even Vision.
Wanda placed her hand on the glass. She didn't say anything else.
And this time, Riven didn't look away.
His breath hitched again. His head lowered.
The silence in the room pressed in as memories surged — faces of children who didn't make it. The ones who screamed. The ones who went quiet.
Tears began to fall freely now. Not from pain. Not from exhaustion.
From grief.
He curled forward, pressing his forehead to his knees, fists clenched. The walls of strength he built over years of torment cracked under the weight of names he never got to learn.
He cried — for them, for himself, for the four years he lost.
And no one in the room dared to interrupt.
Behind the glass, Tony Stark quietly turned and stepped out of the observation room. He didn't say a word. No one stopped him. No one asked.
His face was unreadable, but his eyes — just before he turned — shimmered with something more than just shock.
Even he had a limit.