I know I said revisions... but I couldn't help myself. So here we are :)

Also, TW for drowning. I'll put a triangle (∆) before the scene in case anyone needs to skip :)

"Good afternoon, Agent Tanner," the melodic voice of a certain biochemist rang through Ashley's quarters. The teenager placed the antibiotic cream and package of bandaids down on the desk and spun around to face her visitors.

"Fitzsimmons," Ashley acknowledged, barely able to contain her assignment. "Don't judge my abilities to dress a wound... I'm still learning."

Jemma laughed and simply gestured for Leopold to come forward with the customary briefcase and supplies. "You applied that bandage in the wrong direction, but I suppose I will let it slide."

For the first time since pretty much the time that Ashley had been brought here, she felt at ease. There was something about their presence that was so tranquilizing, forcing her to trust them despite her not being eager to. It was like there was a certain purity that radiated from them, assuring her that they weren't a threat.

"You've got me hanging off the edge, here. Are you gonna tell me what I want to hear or am I going to have to pry it outta you?" Ashley prodded in a half-teasing tone.

Leopold tsked while moving over to the side of her desk to set up his laptop. Jemma, on the other hand, appeared to have other objectives. "Patience, dear. Our first priority is to get you somewhat patched up and presented as one piece for your next lessons."

"That's your first priority," Ashley corrected, grunting as Jemma messed with her left arm. "I want to know what Strucker promised me. It's been a week."

"Good going, Agent. You've successfully fractured your radius," Jemma remarked as she entirely ignored Ashley's commentary. "We'll begin immediately with stem cell therapy and fix a splint for you to use in your off time, but it's not going to fully heal until you give it the proper time off."

"I'll let my arm know when I plan to take a vacation," Ashley sarcastically said and looked down at her bruising arm. A new pain shot from a different part of her body causing her to sharply inhale and wince.

"I'm fine," the teenager tried to assure Jemma but was far from having the biochemist fooled. The woman shot Ashley a look, causing her to cave.

"Where else are you hurt?" She asked although it came out as more of a demand than a question.

"Try the shoulder," Ashley groaned, shrugging off the blanket that she had been using to cover herself. She revealed her shoulder, which was all sorts of crooked and certainly not sitting the way it was supposed to.

"Bloody hell," Jemma sighed and turned to Leopold. "Fitz, I'm going to need your help with this one. I'm no good with dislocated shoulders."

"One second," Leopold responded since he was still in the process of fiddling with the laptop. In a couple of moments, the engineer had finished with his task and turned to Ashley. "Well, this is going to hurt. There's no sugar-coating that. It will reduce the pain once it's back in the socket, however."

Leopold reached towards Ashley's shoulder but she flinched away. "Jemma, you can't handle this?" The teenager pleaded, but the biochemist shook her head.

Ashley really wanted to trust Leopold with this, but there was only so much a girl could take before her trauma caught up with her. As one could tell, she still wasn't enthustiastic about physical contact with men.

"Go ahead," Ashley said through gritted teeth. She had to force herself to focus on something else as Leopold stepped forward and began applying pressure on her shoulder.

Jemma tilted her head in confusion as she saw Ashley lightly cringe and shudder under her partner's touch. She hadn't ever noticed the girl doing such whenever she was dressing her wounds or assessing the damage. In fact, the teenager seemed to be more uncomfortable before Leopold started pushing the ball of her shoulder back into its socket rather than during the actual process.

It finally clicked in the biochemist's mind and she quickly rushed forward to usher Leopold away from Ashley as soon as he was finished. "Okay, perfect, now back to your little project!"

"Excuse me?" Leopold exclaimed, clearly affronted by her comment. "For starters, I hadn't even checked to make sure her shoulder was properly aligned. And 'little project"? This is bigger than nearly anything you've worked on! We're talking about intergalactic-"

"Bigger than anything I've worked on? You wouldn't even be anywhere if it wasn't for my ability to interpret DNA and my comprehensive knowledge on..."

Ashley rolled her eyes at the pair who continued to bicker like a married couple for the next several minutes. She did admit that having Fitzsimmons distracted did give her an opportunity to adjust to the pain and relax from what had just happened, but she eventually decided that it was dragging on for far too long.

"...you British people and your obsession with always trying to one-up everyone!"

"You're seriously going to resort to discriminating against me because of my nationality?"

"Guys," Ashley said loudly in exasperation. "Unless this is leading to a confession of your undying love, let's please move on already."

"Undying love?" Leopold scoffed. "Please, she wishes."

"Not in any of my lifetimes, Scot," Jemma retorted.

"And we're back to nationalities," Ashley groaned. "Seriously, grow up people. Besides, I want to know about what you two came here to tell me."

"Right!" Jemma remarked and all signs of her antagonistic mood faded away. She turned to Leopold and grinned, clearly excited to share their work with the teenager.

"To make things minimally complicated, let's go back to what Jemma explained to you in the meeting with Strucker a week ago," Leopold began, then turned the laptop screen to face Ashley. "This here," he pointed to an image of what she assumed to be long strands of DNA, "is what human DNA looks like. You've got your double helix structure composed of the phosphate and deoxyribose backbone and the nitrogen base pairs. These base pairs consist of adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine, and their orders are what determine genetic instruction. But you're a smart girl, Agent Tanner. I'm assuming you already know all of this?"

"Right," Ashley nodded. "Basic biology. What are you getting at?"

This was where Jemma jumped into the conversation. Leopold had changed the picture to something that closely resembled the DNA before, however, something was amiss. Ashley studied it, but she failed to find the reason as to why it looked abnormal.

"This is a sample of your DNA," Jemma explained. "Everything appears to be regular. Same double helix structure as normal, same phosphates and deoxyribose molecules. But then, you see this."

The biochemist pointed to the nitrogen bases. "The base pairs. They're assembled just as any base pair would be, but these nitrogen bases are nothing like the ones that are used in the DNA in pretty much every living organism on Earth. These aren't adenine, thymine, guanine, or cytosine. In fact, there aren't even names for these because, quite frankly, we've never seen these before."

Ashley was stunned into silence at this revelation. Nearly a minute had passed before she finally managed to gain her voice back. "Then what does this mean? Why would my DNA be so different?"

Leopold sighed, as he was unsure as to how to approach this. "Because, Ashley, you aren't a human. You aren't even anything that originates from Earth. Even Asgardian's DNA is more similar to ours than yours. We can't even explain why you look like us."

"How do you know that I'm not just a human with altered nitrogen bases?" Ashley argued, suddenly growing defensive against Leopold's words. "I could've been tested on in my previous life and my DNA was changed on a molecular level. If you haven't ever seen base pairs like mine before, then how do you know that they aren't coded the same way that normal ones would be?"

"Because Jemma is, unfortunately, smart," Leopold groaned. Jemma flashed him a cocky grin in response. "She was able to study and analyze the patterns and break them down into a system that can be interpreted by us. Jemma then used that system to produce that sketch of what your 'hair' should really look like, which she showed you during the meeting."

"Then you know what the rest of me is supposed to look like?" Ashley asked, however, she wasn't quite sure if she wanted to know the answer. If the remainder of her body looked as anomalous as what Fitzsimmons had predicted it to be, then she didn't think she was prepared to see it.

She didn't want to see herself as a monster.

"The decoding process is long and tedious," Jemma said. "We're still working on a visual for your face."

"So where does that leave us, then? If we're certain that I'm not from this world, then do we have any idea-"

Before she could finish her sentence, however, the door to her quarters swung wide open without a warning. In walked the infamous Jasper, who wore his usual artificial-looking smile. Ashley scowled at the sight of him, as it reminded her of where she was and the burning hatred she bore for everyone besides Fitzsimmons.

"Good afternoon, Agent Tanner," he greeted.

"Is that what this is?" She remarked sarcastically, half to herself. Jasper either missed her comment or decided to ignore it, since his demeanor didn't falter and he continued.

"Your session with our lovely Fitzsimmons has come to an end, I'm afraid," he said. "If you remember from your schedule, you have your swim test set in ten minutes."

Ashley groaned at the thought of another training session. Though, even if they were incredibly vigorous, she had to admit that they were helpful. In just under a week, she felt as though she was in the best shape she had been in since the day she woke up in the alley. Not to mention the number of skills she had acquired, now that she didn't have her powers to fall back on.

That training came at a cost, though, which just happened to be her health. She didn't think it was possible to hurt this much in so many different places at once.

"Has the time really passed that quickly?" Ashley grumbled. When Jasper nodded, she sighed and asked the three to leave so she could change. They did as asked, and soon she was dressed in a black one-piece and had fixed her hair into a braid. While the swimsuit was by no means flashy, she still felt somewhat uncomfortable with how it hugged her form as tightly as it did. Besides, in a perfect world, she would've gotten a wetsuit to wear, since the waters they made her swim in were colder than a glass of ice water.

The walk to the swimming facilities was far too short for Ashley's liking. Before she knew it, she was standing at the edge of a large pool with an assembly of guards and instructors next to her. Dread balled in her stomach as she peered into the deep waters, then back up at the people standing beside her.

"The test is simple," a woman to her side spoke, gesturing to the deep pool. "You free dive 100 feet to the bottom, retrieve the target from the ground, then return to the surface with the target. You will not be permitted to exit the pool until you have successfully retrieved the target."

"Free dive 100 feet?" Ashley exclaimed in disbelief. "An average depth for an unpracticed diver is 20 feet!"

"We have been training you for this, Agent Tanner," the woman quipped, expressing her distaste for Ashley's arguing. "And your abilities are superior to those of a human. Now, will you cooperate, or will we need to advance to a different method?"

Not liking what the woman was insinuating, Ashley sighed and relented. "Fine."

"Good. We are supplying vented ear protection to combat the pressure, but otherwise, you will be diving with no technological aids." The woman handed her a set of devices that Ashley promptly tucked into her ears.

∆

Nerves coursed through the teenager as she stared into the menacing depths of the pool. The waters appeared so serene and placid on the outside, but she knew better than to expect that during her test.

It might appear tranquil, but water could kill like no other.

Ashley knew that putting her task off any longer would make her experience even worse, so she forced her anxiety to the back of her mind and drew slow, deep breaths. The teenager attempted to put herself at ease by playing a song in her mind, then used it to drown at her surroundings and nerves. Soon she had found her breathing and heartbeat composed and regular. The artificial music gave her a feeling of strength, reminding her how much she had gotten through by this point and allowed her to feel confident in her abilities.

(I'm thinking of a song like Enemy, In My Bones, Whatever It Takes, Glitter and Gold, Natural... something along those lines, but you can pretend it's whatever song you like.)

Before she could talk herself out of it, Ashley took a deep breath and dove head-first into the water. As per usual, the temperature was frigid and chilled her to the bone, but she refused to let it bother her. Instead, she took notice of the markers that lined the wall, signaling how deep the water was.

10 feet.

Not wasting any time or oxygen, Ashley settled into a strong pace of swimming downward. To reduce any waste of energy, she kept her arms at her sides, and instead focused on using powerful kicks with her legs to descend quickly. She remained comfortable for a while at this pace, but soon she began to undergo the effects of the lack of oxygen.

50 feet.

Upon seeing the halfway marker to the bottom, the teenager felt somewhat renewed. She was already a quarter way done, and it had been maybe 30 seconds. An average human would usually have minimal problems with holding their breath for two minutes.

Her exposed skin, however, was faring much worse than her oxygen situation. The cold bite of the water had already sucked the warmth out of her and caused her skin to burn in pain. Between the deficiency in oxygen and the frigid water, she was growing numb in her extremities.

80 feet.

The target now became visible in the dim lighting of the lamp that was installed on the floor. It looked to be a hard drive or something of the sort, but her vision was growing hazy so it was pretty difficult to tell. With a series of increasingly strong kicks, Ashley surged towards the object lying on the tiled floor. The pressure of the nearly 100 feet of water was so intense that it made her skull feel as though it might collapse on itself. She couldn't even imagine what her ears would've felt like had it not been for the devices that the woman had supplied her with.

100 feet.

At last, she had reached the floor. Her fingers, which she had minimal control over at this point, clumsily fumbled with the target on the ground for several moments too long before it was finally in her grasp. Without hesitating, Ashley spun her body around a pressed her feet against the floor in preparation for launching up.

That was her mistake.

Before she could even realize what was happening, a cold strip of metal tightly clamped around her ankle. Her previously tired eyes flew open in fear and she looked down at her lower leg, which was being restrained by a cuff. The cuff was attached to a chain, which was then tethered to a huge weight. Panic flooded her body as she stuck the target in her mouth and used both hands to pry and pound at the cuff to no avail.

Her fingers wound around the cuff to try and find a weak spot, but to her dismay, it was structurally sound all the way around. She then moved to the chain, feeling each of the links for an area that she could try to break, but the chain too seemed to be constructed to perfection and was far too thick for her to destroy with her bear hands. She knew that attempting to mess with the weight would get her nowhere though, given that it was simply a huge mass of what appeared to be some form of metal.

Her body was quickly running out of oxygen and energy as she struggled against her bonds. Even with pouring all of her strength into kicking and swimming, the weight didn't even shift from its position. She was trapped.

She screamed in horror, causing a stream of frigid water to pour into her lungs. She was now stuck 100 feet underwater with waning consciousness and water suffocating her. The teenager frantically pulled at the cuff and chain, then even tried to pound the metal against the ground to break it, but it refused to set her free. As darkness crept from the corners of her vision and her lungs seared in agony, she began to see her life flash before her eyes.

A miscellany of emotions wracked her mind as she fought helplessly against the weight. She was frightened, remorseful, devastated, and discouraged all at once. However, out of all the feelings that plagued her, her anger eventually overpowered everything else. She was livid at her captors for sending her into her death. She was furious at their audacity to call themselves her ally. She was seething at their cowardly method of taking her out. They couldn't even kill her themselves: they had to rely on a death chamber of water.

It was this anger that drove her into her rejection of defeat and kickstarted her survival instincts. Pain was no longer the only thing wracking her body—adrenaline was, too. She was caught somewhere between being entirely depleted of energy and being surging with it. With the use of both her legs and her arms, Ashley slowly rose from the ground with the weight in tow.

Her lungs pleaded for air, tempting her to open her mouth again, but Ashley had learned from the first time. The water she had priorly sucked in now rested in her lungs, seeing that she was unable to cough it out.

Ashley could no longer see straight. Her vision was so distorted that she couldn't even tell which direction was up, but that was able to be determined by swimming in the opposite direction that the weight was pulling her in. Her hands and feet had grown entirely numb and unresponsive to any commands, causing her to be thankful that she had used her mouth to hold the hard drive.

70 feet.

With each foot that she rose, the pull of the weight seemed to be growing greater and greater. The effort she had to put into swimming up had far surpassed anything she had ever done before, and this wasn't even with the help of her powers.  Her head pounded and she felt so dizzy that she could've thrown up right then and there if it hadn't of been for the hard drive that was resting in her mouth.

50 feet.

Ashley had long since lost count of the time she had spent underwater, but she had a feeling that it was much longer than a few minutes. The only sensation she could feel now in her body was pain. She couldn't even feel the effects of the cold water against her bare skin anymore.  Every muscle in her body had been set aflame with the intense torture that she was going through.

Her mind grew blurred and incomprehensible, just as her vision had. Any grasp of spacing or distance traveled was completely lost on her now. For all that she knew, she could've been either been nearing the surface or just barely off the bottom. This only discouraged her more, since she couldn't even determine a goal to set for her to swim to.

15 feet.

Her anger, and in turn adrenaline, was quickly fading from her body. Now, all she could think of was all the mistakes she had possibly made that led her up to this point. If only she had insisted to go with Peter... she knew he wouldn't have resisted spending more time with her. While she didn't want to admit it to herself, she knew deep down inside that there was something more than a friendship shared between her and her best friend. She would've gone back and told him that they should have a study session again, except this time, replace the word 'study' with 'dinner', and the word 'session' with 'date'. She could've seen the way his eyes lit up when he spoke to her about something he was passionate about again. She could've watched him smile again when she walked into the room and wrapped him in her embrace.

Most importantly though, she wouldn't have been kidnapped by Strucker. She could've lived on her life with the people that she had grown to accept as her new family. In fact, even if she had still been abducted, she probably could've turned the man down or escaped long ago. Instead, she had naïvely chosen to chase her ghost of a past and sacrificed everything that she had worked so hard to gain.

It was too late for regrets now, she supposed. She had even gotten so close to making it out.

Oxygen deprivation catches up sooner or later, however, and her time had finally come.

With a cry and a gasp, piercing and chilly water entirely flooded her throat and lungs. She gagged on the water and wailed at the pain shooting throughout her body, but there was nothing she could do. A cold sensation splashed the top of her head and face, but just as soon as she felt it, it disappeared. All that she could feel now was weight dragging her ankle back down into the depths of the water and the agony that gripped her.

With one last sob, she fell victim to the lethal water and her world went black.

HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAH