Alright, everybody! Welcome to Febuwhump. Am I going to be posting every day? Probably not. Are they all going to be great? Also probably not. But I swear I'm doing my best! I hope you like day 1!

Day 1: Trapped

The girl stared at the flat white wall barely six feet away from her face. She always stared at the wall. Sometimes remembering the before. An apartment with off-white walls and photos on the wall. Photos of a man and a woman, and her. The girl and her aunt and her uncle. Other times she remembered the other cell….smaller and colder concrete walls. Food delivered once a day through a slot in the wall. That had been worse. So much worse. Experiments. Blood. Screaming...then people with guns. Different people. A man with an eyepatch, her teeth around a hand that had been held out to her.

She stared at the wall and tried to remember before instead. Before had been good. Warm. Family. Love. But it was getting harder and harder to remember. She didn't know if that was because of the needles or the blood or...whatever else she'd managed to forget. Well, she was trying to forget. It was a work in progress.

The man with the eyepatch had been surrounded by others...all with guns. He'd stared at her for a long time, his one eye meeting hers. But she hadn't spoken. She knew better. They'd done the same thing to her so many times...tried to trick her into speaking. She knew better now. She'd learned. She was trapped. It was something she had accepted. No. Not accepted. Just...existed. It was her existence. They'd taken her when she was twelve. She knew that much. Remembered that birthday. Balloons and an Iron Man cake and a boy her age, grinning and round face handing her a box full of Legos.

Then...no. she didn't remember. Wouldn't remember. Not that. The man with the eyepatch had opened her door and she'd attacked. Of course, she'd known better. But terrible fear had coiled in her stomach and she'd attacked as soon as he'd gotten close, a hand held out. Hadn't let him talk. Hadn't let him touch her. She didn't want anything or anyone to touch her. Then there had been a dark in her neck and the next thing she'd known, she'd been in this room.

It wasn't a cell. Not really. There were no bars, but the walls were all concrete and the door was locked. No windows. She sat on the bed, shivering and staring at the people who wheeled in carts of food that she sometimes ate, sometimes didn't. Sometimes her eyes would get hot and she'd curl up in the bed, covering her head with the blankets and sobbing into the pillow. She felt empty. Dead. Cold. She wanted to go home. But she had no home. Not one that she remembered anyway. It was all a blur, the before.

She didn't want to remember. Not really.

So she existed in the room with the bed and the sink and a toilet behind a little wall. She changed clothes and took showers and ate food sometimes. She was cold all the time and she did her best not to cry. She looked at herself in the mirror sometimes. Long brown hair always tied back. Brown eyes sunken in a skeletal face. No one here spoke to her. Not that she'd speak to them.

They hadn't wanted her to talk there, and so, like a dog, they had trained her not to. It had been embarrassingly easy. She was ashamed of how easy it had been.

There was yelling in the hall the day it changed. Angry voices that woke her from a midday nap. She had been curled up under the covers...had fallen asleep feeling herself slip away a little more. At first, she'd stayed sane by reciting things in her head. The names of people she loved. Prayers. Words in Spanish. The periodic table of elements. Pi. Anything.

Slowly, she'd given up. The people at the other place had tied her up and stuck her with needles and there had been so much pain that she'd felt herself slip away, little by little, until she was...well, whatever she was now. But the voices woke her and she stared at the wall for a little while. She almost never heard people...almost never in the...well...however long she'd been there. Bringing the covers with her, she sat up, wrapping herself firmly in the blanket and staring at the mirror by the door. Skeletal face. Sunken eyes. Shivering. Always shivering. Always cold.

"What the hell is this, Nick? Who is she?"

"Her name is Penny Parker."

The name made something snap in her brain...like a Lego clicking into place. Penny Parker. That was her. How had she forgotten that? Penny Parker. She didn't say it out loud but she thought it, the words filling her like water. Penny Parker. Had they said it before?

"How old is she?"

"Fourteen." That was the man with the eyepatch. But she didn't know the other voice.

"What the fuck! Why are you keeping a fourteen-year-old locked up like an animal here? Why the hell did you bring me here? Did you think that this would be okay with me?"

"She isn't…"

"Is the door locked?" The other voice snapped, and the eyepatch man went silent. "Open it."

"Stark…"

"Open it or I'll bust it down, Nick, don't fucking test me. Why the hell did you even bring me here?"

"She is a dangerous mutant. I wanted you to take a look at some blood samples..."

"She is a child! A fourteen-year-old girl! And you want to run experiments on her?"

Silent. And then the doorknob was turning, revealing eyepatch guy and another man. One that looked vaguely familiar. She pulled the blankets more firmly around her, shivering and fighting the urge to run. There was nowhere to run. Besides, she knew that man. Somehow. But she was sure they'd never met. He looked sad. And kind of...old. Slowly, he stepped into the room, watching her. His eyes never strayed from her. Shivering, she stared back. "Hi." The man greeted.

"She doesn't talk." The eyepatch man informed him, his one eye trained on her as well. "Attacked us as soon as we tried to save her. She's HYDRA. New version of the Winter Soldier. They were experimenting with genetic mutation. Her DNA was fused with arachnid DNA...she went missing when she was twelve, so we have to assume it was around that time. We're not sure how that affected her brain development. She hasn't spoken since we found her."

"Really? You lock her in a room by herself and she won't speak to you? Weird." The man snapped, angry for some reason. She wondered if he were angry with her but as soon as he turned back to her, the anger dropping from his face.

"We've tried, Stark!"

They had tried once. A woman with a high ponytail and a gun in her hand. She'd stood in the doorway, gun drawn, and had asked her questions that she'd ignored. They'd asked her questions before too...in the other place. Asked her questions about something called Hydra and the cell and the people before. But she hadn't spoken. She knew better. Had just stared at the wall and waited for the woman to leave. Afterward, she'd heard the woman talking in the hallway to the eyepatch man. "I don't know if she can communicate." She'd stopped listening after that. Had almost been relieved.

The man moved closer to her, bringing her back to the present. For a moment, huge brown eyes met hers, and she wondered why she knew him. Stark...did she know that name? Was it even a name? "You cold?" He asked suddenly. She nodded. She was always cold. Had always been cold. But not before...before had been warm. Was he from before? He held out a hand then. "Wanna come with me?"

There was no reason for her to trust him. Just because he seemed vaguely familiar didn't mean that she could trust him. But she didn't trust the one with the eyepatch. She knew that for sure. And she couldn't imagine feeling much worse than she felt in this place. So she took his hand, letting him pull her to her feet. "Stark, that girl is…"

"I swear to fuck, Nick, if you say the words 'Shield' or 'property' right now…"

"You can't just take…"

"The girl comes with me or I tell everyone, and I mean, literally everyone, that, not only is Shield not gone and not only are you not dead, that you're keeping a child locked up in a cell in a basement like an animal." His face was almost blank, jaw tight, and he looked furious.

There was a long silence. Then the man with the eyepatch shook his head. "Stark, she's not just fourteen-year-old girl. We have no idea what HYDRA did to her…"

"Yeah, I'll figure it out. She's coming with me. C'mon kid, let's get you out of here."

Out of here. Out. She'd been trapped for so long. But this man...Stark. She knew that name.

She followed the man out of the room...through a hallway of concrete, and finally, out into the sunlight. It had been so long since she'd been in the sunlight. Beside the building they had been in...a low concrete structure with a sign advertising dry-cleaning on front, was a car. A shiny silver car that beeped when the man hit a button on a remote in his hand. He opened a door on the side, gesturing for her to get in, and she did, not really thinking about it. He'd given her a choice...maybe that was why she'd gone with him. Stark. A name she knew.

He climbed in the other side, starting the car. She remembered cars from before...remembered riding in them. And she must have ridden in one when the man with the eyepatch had moved her from her first cell to the second one. He turned a button and then heat was coming from the vents. Heat. She'd missed heat. Hands pressed against the vents, she shivered and soaked up the heat. He turned the knob again and it got hotter.

She was shaking, but she didn't know if it was because of the cold. She was in a car with a man that she had decided to trust on...what? A whim? After the last man she'd met had taken her away from a cell...from kidnappers who had turned her into...into this...and now...he was taking her somewhere else? Was this shock? She vaguely remembered reading something about people going into shock but couldn't remember any useful details.

"You know, spiders can't thermoregulate." She looked over at him, but he was staring straight out the front glass of the car as he pulled out of a parking lot and onto the road. Could it be that easy? Could this be it? Was she really free? "In the winter, a lot of them hibernate. Others just die. That could be why you're so cold...the temperature at the compound, that's where I live, by the way, should be warm enough for you. If not, just tell me and we'll turn it up. Or...well...mime it, if you want. Can you talk?"

She hesitated. They had never let her speak. Then the man with the eyepatch had spoken to her but..but so had the people at the other place. They'd talked to her and when she'd replied...bad. That had been bad. She didn't think about that. Pushed it all away. Pushed it down. It hurt...so bad. So she stared straight ahead, and for a while, they drove in silence, trees and buildings and people flying past. She watched them...remembering before. She had been a person like them.

They had been driving for a long time before he spoke again. "Penny." She turned to him. It didn't sound like a question. "Your name is Penny Parker. I'm going to try and find your family. I'm sure if a kid went missing, there was a police report or something. I'll find your family, okay? Get you home. You're gonna be okay." His voice was casual. Calm. Like someone who did this a lot. Saved people...Stark. Tony Stark. Tony Stark saved people.

Iron Man.

She didn't say the words. Not out loud. But her mouth formed them before she could stop herself, immediately flinching. Mouthing words counted too. She knew that. "Kid?" She curled up in the seat, eyes heating up, head resting on her knees. Waiting. "Hey, kid? You okay?" She hadn't meant to! "Penny!" The car moved to the side of the road, slowing and then coming to a stop. "Penny? Kid, are you alright?"

The hand that finally touched her was gentle. A careful, light touch on her shoulder, and she stiffened, jaw tight, tense. Waiting. She knew what a hand touching her meant. But this one just stayed there for a minute, silence thick in the car before he spoke. "I'm not going to hurt you, kid. Promise. No one's going to hurt you."

There was no reason for this man to have saved her. None. She didn't understand. Didn't understand any of it, least of all why she couldn't stop crying. Finally, the hand moved, wrapping around her back, and with a sigh, the man pulled her close, her head resting on his chest. "You're okay. You're alright." The voice was so sure. So steady. "We're going to get you back to your family, kid. It's going to be fine."

Slowly, her hand moved up, clutching his back and gripping onto his jacket. Her fingers were sticky. She knew that...knew that she could climb walls and that she hadn't been able to before the needles and the screaming. The man beside her patted her back, letting her tuck her head under her chin. "I was trapped." She whispered the words...barely. It had been so long since she'd said anything. Her voice was raspy and weak. But he tightened his hold on her for just a second before pulling away, looking her right in the eyes.

"Yeah? Well, you're free now, kid."

Thank you for reading!