The next day, Ruby was awake bright and early, ready to take on the day. But her limited movement capabilities prevented her from doing much except washing her face before collapsing back onto the bed.

When a nurse knocked and entered the room with her breakfast tray at exactly 8:06 it was accompanied by a sheet of paper that looked suspiciously like her school timetable. Sure enough, it was labeled with scheduled times for different sessions across the week with different focuses and priorities. In an hour she was scheduled for a hearing test and a hearing aid fitting if they deemed it helpful to her. Until that was sorted, she had the rest of the day to herself for no one was yet quite willing to test how much sound they could withstand if she could not yet hear herself.

Every deafening attempt she had made at talking over the last week or so had been so disjointed due to the fact that she could not figure out the noises separate from her own mind, no words had successfully formed except for the easier and more recognisable words such as 'hello' and 'bye'. It pained Ruby with every attempt at talking because she knew the sounds existed and she was capable of such words but as they left her mouth she was all the more unsure of herself.

The examiner greeted her with a grin and a handshake before diving head first into the examination since the usual small talk took nearly as long as the session.

It was a tedious affair and the device the examiner had stuck behind and on her ears was uncomfortable and left her fidgeting throughout the majority of the process. She pushed the button in her hand every time she thought she could hear something, although she managed to convince herself that it was simply a figment of her imagination. Each blip in her mind was a ghost of the life she once led.

By the end of the session the examiner began to speak to himself about the next steps but she could hear his muffled sounds and could see on his lips that her results were promising before dismissing her.

As the day passed by, she navigated the halls in her wheelchair, far more used to travelling by herself now. The ringing assisted her wherever she went and muffled the footsteps and conversations of SHIELD agents that parted around her like a ship in the ocean. No one so much as looked at her without a hint of apprehension, wondering when her next outburst would be. And she couldn't help but feel lonely.

She strolled the halls by herself.

She took the lift by herself.

She conversed with herself- her thoughts unusually quiet behind the ringing.

Manoeuvring through one of the lower levels she happened across a glass wall, through which she could see a familiar agent sparring against a dummy weighted to the floor of the training room. Auburn was panting heavily, sweat coating her forehead and plastering her baby hairs to her forehead as she punched and kicked the dummy. Ruby leaned forward and knocked on the window but Auburn didn't pay her any attention. Rapping her knuckles against the glass louder, the agent looked up and smiled briefly in acknowledgement. It wasn't until Ruby stood from the wheelchair did she move to open the door.

Face to face, Ruby hesitated. She knew exactly what she wanted but Auburn wasn't wearing mufflers and she couldn't risk speaking. Raising her fists meekly, she punched at the air.

Auburn's face softened, it felt almost pitying and Ruby shook her fists this time which made the agent laugh and beckon her in. Leaving the wheelchair by the door, Ruby wandered to the middle of the room where Auburn had been before, giddy with anticipation. She tried not to move for fear of over-exerting herself immediately.

The agent stood in front of her, hands on hips and squaring up the teenager in front of her. In silence, she carefully positioned Ruby in front of the dummy before standing nearby and demonstrating the stance she takes to go in for a punch. It took a few attempts but Ruby succeeded in eliciting a proud smirk from Auburn. Then, Auburn slowly twisted her body and landed her fist on the dummy and watched as Ruby imitated in a much more rushed manner. Her technique was off and far too rushed to be perfect but upon correction she was good to go.

Auburn stood nearby, knowing that the girl was still fragile and healing, within range of the girl's sight to provide the support she needed.

The session lasted mere minutes before Ruby had to sit down but already she was glowing at the thrill of exercise. It was the comfort of knowing she would soon be able to run again that spurred Ruby back to the training room with Auburn, even when they fitted her hearing aid and she could hear Auburn's instructions above their usual muffle, she tried to improve herself independently. She would improvise her technique and Auburn would cry out in protest at the monstrosity that was her form.

Nonetheless, the workouts improved Ruby's recovery greatly. And they provided a boost in her recovery for after a few more weeks she found herself walking everywhere and sneaking in a jog down empty hallways.

Her workouts were also a place to let out her pent up anger without destroying the ship or harming those living around her. The tests were taxing and cost too much energy than she cared to spend. The volume tests took the most out of her for they took her out onto the landing deck, hooked up to a machine while the scientists running the experiments stood at the furthest end of the deck or watching from behind the steel-reinforced entrance door with far more advanced mufflers than when they first dug her out from under the rubble.

They had her scream as loud as she could until her throat was raw and each time they expected her to somehow surpass what she had the last time. Fortunately, this was the only session in which she was forced to be as loud as possible which felt like a blessing in disguise.

Her sign language and lip reading classes took a different sort of toll in which she was tasked to stretch muscles she had never stretched before. Her fingers fumbled over one another as she struggled to create the signs and every word formulated into a word her mother would scold her for even thinking. Luckily, her hearing aid allowed her to comprehend the voices of those around her in her right ear above the ringing and, upon testing it once again, she could hear her music. An improvement despite the occasional song splitting the vocals and bass between the ears and so she only ever heard half a song.

It was better than nothing, however.

Her next-to-final lesson, after months of testing and training, was that of controlling her noise. She was going on regular jogs around the facility beside Auburn. And every other day she would sit in a room with Zoe and an examiner, both wearing hi-tech mufflers, trying her best to speak. At first, she could feel that she was yelling and hearing her voice boom in her ear forced the hearing aid to squeal at the onslaught while the examiner and Zoe winced.

She began to whisper, so low she could hear a rumble in her chest, any words muffled by the ringing. Eventually, she began to raise her voice, her volume, to a point where she could comfortably hear herself and Zoe was confident enough to remove her mufflers and raise her chin with a proud "well done, Ruby". Her words were disjointed and nearly legible to begin with but now that she had her volume under control she could begin speech therapy.

They only offered her as many lessons as she wanted, deciding that every Saturday she would reconvene with Zoe and decide whether or not she wanted an extra week of lessons or to return home.

At this point in her stay she had missed the second half of her school term and would have to retake her year, so, with a month of summer left, she figured some time at home readjusting would benefit her enough. But, the day she was due to leave for home, Ruby panicked and backtracked into the interview room with Zoe.

"I'm not ready," Ruby said in her booming voice everyone had grown accustomed to.

"Ruby..." Zoe sighed, flipping open her notes as if she was the girl's therapist, not a private investigator with nearly twenty-five years of experience behind her, "we have had this conversation many times over the last few weeks and you were certain-"

"But now I'm not. I- I've been thinking and not only do I have to explain everything to mum and dad but I'll be the odd one out at school, behind a year and completely different. There are kids at that school who won't hesitate to pick on someone they see to be weak."

"You are not weak." Zoe reached across the table to grasp Ruby's hands and squeezes tightly. "You have come so far in eight months, it wasn't easy but you persevered and look at you now." She paused for a moment, waiting for the faint smile on Ruby's face. "And who cares if you're different, I grew up as a lesbian in the late eighties and look at me now. Different is beautiful and powerful, even if it doesn't look like it on the outside."

Ruby's eyes welled up but she didn't let the tears spill as she leaned her forehead against their clasped hands with a small gasp.

"Thank you," she looks back up at Zoe with a new smile and finally feeling confident enough to face the world that used to belong to her.