"Did you hit your head in your sleep?" Wanda scoffed, the soft tone in her voice drying once more into something callous. "My eyes are blue, always have been, with the exception of red flares when my powers are in use."

Ashley blinked slowly to verify that her eyes weren't failing her due to just awakening. However, as her lids cleared away the haze of sleep from her vision, Wanda's irises still lacked the color Ashley once admired in them. "They are certainly grey now. I am not seeing things."

"Unlikely," Wanda rolled her eyes, turning away from Ashley and peering down the hallway grimly. "Get yourself together. They should be here soon to collect us for the daily procedures."

Ashley hesitated to respond, slightly hurt by the apathy from the brunette, though she was growing miffed now. Why couldn't Wanda see that there was no reason to antagonize her? They were going through the exact same situation: misguided teenage girls who joined to protect the people they loved, but instead were slapped with betrayal and pain beyond words. Why couldn't Wanda just see this and realize that they could work through this hell together?

Still, nothing explained why she could no longer see the blue in Wanda eyes. Had something occurred to the brunette overnight? Perhaps as a residual effect from Ashley's outbursts last night? Or was the discrepancy on Ashley's end?

The latter option made little to no sense. It was near impossible to acquire a color blindness overnight, even at a facility as dangerous and unbecoming as this one. Especially if the only difference she had noticed yet was the color in Wanda's irises.

To verify that statement, Ashley spared a glance around her confinement cell. To her disgruntlement, she noticed at streak of some sort of ash and dust coating her exposed legs. The same sediment dirtying her legs was also splotched on the concrete around her, causing Ashley to scowl at the unhygienic conditions they were exposing her to. Of course, they also didn't even bother to provide her with disinfectant and antibiotics for any of her wounds, so she couldn't exactly say she was surprised.

Despite the protests from her sore and bruised arms, she lifted them enough to brush off the grime from her skin. She knew it wouldn't make circumstances much better, but she couldn't stand the sight of contaminants caked on top of her open injuries. She really didn't feel like having the life sucked from her due to infection again.

However, as the pads of her fingers and palms ran across her bare legs, a wave of realization and horror crashed into her still-drowsy mind. Whatever she was trying to rid her skin of was certainly not dust, dirt, or ash.

It was blood.

Grey blood.

A scream, which was nearly muted by her damaged and dry vocal chords, bubbled up her throat as she stared at the grey liquid dripping from her hands. While the top layer had dried out, giving off the appearance of dust or ash, there were still a multitude places where she was bleeding from. Agitating the wounds by trying to clean the 'sediment' from them only made it worse.

Though, the fact that she was still actively bleeding hardly bothered her. She was merely terrified by the color of the fluid that trickled from her legs and across her hands.

"Why the hell is it grey," Ashley shrieked, turning to Wanda with wild eyes. The brunette, who had just recently turned back to face the younger girl, had been studying Ashley's reaction to the blood on her hands curiously. Once Ashley's words registered in Wanda's mind, she made eye contact with the girl and rose an eyebrow.

"That's red," Wanda negated, eyeing the girl suspiciously and gauging her reaction. She had no clue what had caused Ashley to lose the ability to see the color in her eyes or blood, but if it was even slightly correlated to whatever happened the night prior, she had no interest in being involved.

Ashley was dangerous, like her.

They were both messed up. Defects. Abnormal beings.

Wanda did not want anything to do with her. She had already grown wise with the knowledge that associating with creatures like her would only lead to pain and an even more twisted life. While it might be cruel to the younger girl, she could care less at this point. In the world of Hydra, there couldn't be room for sympathy.

Ashley had already begun to understand Wanda's intentions and opinion of her. To the brunette, she was just another one of Strucker's test subjects. Which, Ashley had begun to realize, was not far from the truth.

Still, experiment or not, Ashley couldn't help but wish to obtain the friendship of the brunette. In these past weeks—months, whatever they were— the white-haired teenager had been ripped apart and decimated by the overwhelming isolation. The lack of genuine social interaction was taking a toll on her.

Going through the crap that she's been put through recently was devastating to both her physical and mental health. She wasn't sure how much longer she could stave off permanent depression and psychosis. In the episodes that she has already experienced, her personality and conscience were damaged brutally.

All she dared to wish for now was someone who could help her through this, even if their assistance was minimal and ineffective.

She should've known better than to bear such delusional dreams. Luxuries like that were never granted here.

"Maybe it is," she remarked grimly, studying her blood-coated hands closely before sighing in frustration. "I've never experienced anything like it. Now that I've noticed, I can't see any red or blue."

"There's not much color in here to begin with," Wanda pointed out sharply. "At least you aren't missing out on much. Just wait until you lose your hearing for five weeks. Can't you just imagine how exciting it is to not know when someone is approaching or about to beat you? I'm sure you'll love it."

"Sounds lovely," Ashley grumbled, a look of displeasure spreading across her face at Wanda's sarcastic and insensitive words. She was gradually liking this girl less and less. The previous beauty that Ashley had discovered in the brunette's features was quickly becoming overshadowed by her bitter and inconsiderate words. There was nothing more hideous than a cruel person.

    "Speak of the devil and he shall arrive," Wanda commented abruptly, causing Ashley's gaze to snap up from its transfixed position on her grey-coated palms to the metal bars. Just as the brunette said, one of the twisted men had arrived at the door of their cell, shackles in one hand and a gun in the other. Ashley's eyes slipped from the weapon he held in his hands to the glimmering keys on his hip, but dismay soon replaced her wishful thinking. The keys were attached to a durable and retractable band, which was fastened and welded onto a metal loop of his utility belt.

    "Don't hurt yourself," Wanda advised to Ashley, though her words were lacking any genuine concern towards the teenager and seemed rather amused. "You aren't smarter than I am. If there was a way to take the keys from him, I would've figured it out already."

    Before Ashley could quip back, a low growl sounded from the man who was unlocking their door. "If you don't keep your little mouths shut and keep your hideous sounds to yourself, I will have no issue with blowing the vocal chords from your body. And the brown-haired broad is right, you aren't getting these keys off of me."

    The white-haired teenager was itching to shoot a snarky response right back at him, or even Wanda for that matter, but something in her conscience warned against doing so. The guard who had come to retrieve them for their presumed experiments wasn't exaggerating his words. She resorted to keeping her lips pressed together in a frustrated, thin line, but her vexation didn't go unnoticed by the others.

    Stifling a cry of pain, Ashley scowled and pushed herself up from the ground. The pain radiating through her limbs and torso were still past the point of bearable, but something was different. Her leg, which had certainly been broken the night prior, had already felt like the bone was renewing itself. Don't get her wrong—it was far from healed, and the sheer pain that shot up from the break and into her body was harrowing, but it was only another indicator that her powers were beginning to surface once more.

    Was her inhibitor chip malfunctioning?

    Or was she changing?

    A sharp shove to the shoulder broke Ashley's train of thought and refocused her attention on her current situation. She didn't pass on the opportunity to slip a small glare in to Wanda, who shrugged in response at pushing Ashley before her and subjecting her to the guard's anger first. They were quite the... supportive pair, as you could say.

    The three silently stalked through the twisted maze of a hallway, Ashley and Wanda now bearing cuffs around their wrists that the guard had control over. Ashley had given up trying to memorize that path about twenty turns ago, now having to directing all of her focus to not losing herself to dizziness or nausea from all of the spinning. Wanda, who was undoubtedly accustomed to the journey, simply rolled her eyes at Ashley.

    "What's your problem?" Ashley spat, only to receive a jab in the ribs from the butt of the guard's assault rifle. She glowered at the man and his actions before glaring daggers at Wanda when she could sense the brunette smirking.

    "I wouldn't worry about her problem, priss. Yours is about to be a lot bigger if you don't shut your trap before I do it for you," he snarled, threateningly pressing the cold muzzle of his gun flush with her cheek.

Wanda caught the wild look in Ashley's eyes before the white-haired teenager even realized what she was thinking. Defying all odds, which had been stacked against her heavily thanks to her broken leg, the gun pointed at her temple, and her wrists being shackled together, she exploded like a cat out of hell.

The guard didn't even know what hit him until the blood was running down his face.

The Sokovian teenager had never witnessed so much rage, hatred, and downright malice in a single body. It transuded through her skin and dictated her actions until she was sure that Ashley's mind wasn't in control. At a speed that possibly rivaled Wanda's brother, Ashley struck the gun out of his grasp and pummeled the guard's temple with the metal binding her wrists until he collapsed to the ground.

With each passing blow, the man's struggle grew weaker and the crimson fluid spilling from the gashes crescendoed. The brunette could've sworn she heard snarls emenating from the teenager and saw sharp teeth glinting in the luminescence of the hall lighting. Admittedly, she was anticipating Ashley to lose all touch with her humanity and tear out the guy's throat with her teeth.

Mists of blood decorated Wanda's clothes, but it was nothing in comparison to the drenching of Ashley's clothes. Large sections were painted a in a horrifying, yet somewhat beautiful, shade of red as though they were pieces in an art museum.

By the time Wanda finally snapped out of her shock, Ashley had already disfigured the guard's face so badly that he was unrecognizeable. His nose and jaw were certainly broken, judging by the unnatural angle they jutted out from his face, and sizeable chunks of his cheeks and forehead had been skinned by the metal cuffs.

The man was clearly on life's last strings. One more hit from Ashley would force the grim reaper to pay the guard a visit. And, judging by the character she had gauged from Ashley, this was about to be the teenager's first murder.

Before things escalated to the point of no return, which Wanda was sure would ride on the shoulders of the young female for many years to come, she decided to intervene. Her hands twitched at her sides as a familiar red glow emitted from her palms, quickly seeping into the surrounding air and picking up strength. Right when Ashley was about to deliver the devestating blow, Wanda's tendrils of magic coiled around her wrists and pulled her away from the dying guard.

The white-haired teenager fought valiantly, putting up a surprisingly strong fight for a girl whose leg was broken and the remainder of her body in questionable shape. However, physical strength was not enough to keep her from subduing to Wanda's magic, causing Ashley to slightly cave. A large tremor raked across the girl's body before she started struggling against Wanda's hold once more.

Keeping Ashley's body contained was putting a strain on her already weakened magic, so Wanda decided to approach the situation with a different tactic. If her body could not be controlled, then she'd have to settle for dictating the teenager's mind.

Her hands flitted about in dance-like movements, spinning and weaving a burst of scarlet magic in midair. In one fluid movement, she directed the energy from the air into the habitat of Ashley's mind. She closed her eyes, focusing on the new tether between the their two minds formed from the red mist.

An unusual pressure built in Wanda's head as she tried to sort her way through Ashley's ramped and overwhelming emotions. A barrier—unlike anything she had ever encountered in any of her magic endeavors—grew as solid as tungsten around Ashley's mind. The energy felt antonymic to the signature she had once recognized as Ashley, as though someone entirely different has taken over her conscience.

Though, what she found even more bizarre than that situation, was the abrubpt glow the teenager's eyes began emitting. For several moments, she felt entranced by the gleaming gold shimmer overcasting her previously blue eyes. The light evolved from a faint smolder to a glaring toxic sun, burning whatever it touched with its deceptive beauty and venemous warmth. Even from her stance several feet away, the domination it demanded radiated towards her like a malignant, radioactive sickness.

It seemed as though Ashley's body had originally attempted to fight off the divergent entity, seeing that she convulsed for several moments during the transition and flinched at the color contrast in her eyes. Now, though, it appeared like something inside her collapsed, or perhaps was triggered, as her limbs went limp and succumbed to the poisonous golden light. Dark, sickly veins stretched under the surface of her skin like an orb weaver's web, transforming her skin from a healthy tan to a ghastly, diseased pale tone.

What the hell... Wanda thought, horrified, and quite frankly dumbfounded, at the scene playing out before her eyes. Through the course of her containment in Hydra facilities, she had witnessed a great deal of things that were apalling, terrifying, unearthly, and anywhere in between.

This, however, drowned out anything she had ever seen before. Everything was unfolding so rapidly and unexpectedly that she found it hard to keep herself grounded. Though, if there was one thing that she could gather from Ashley's possessed body, was that she needed to be shut down.

Wanda gritted her teeth in determination as she pulled her hands together oncemore and generated a sphere of scarlet energy. It took everything in her willpower to not cave to the gravitational pull of the gold light, which seemed to crave the power she emitted. With a final push, she sent her magic flying towards Ashley with the trajectory hitting her temple.

Crimson and gold sparks flew as the powers grappled with each other. Neither displayed any signs of giving in, causing doubt and concern to seep into Wanda's mind. The horrifying thought of her not being strong enough to supress whatever was overtaking Ashley surfaced in her head.

Several painstaking moments later, her doubts were disproved. Something shifted in Ashley, allowing the perfect crack in the gold energy's defenses to form and permit Wanda's magic entrance. The second that the red mist touched Ashley's head, a blinding explosion discharged from the teengaer's body, rendering Ashley unconscious and sending Wanda flying into a nearby wall.

The last thing either girl could see was a wave of Hydra soldiers rushing down the hallway, only to get blasted back by the aftershocks of the power collision.

Well
That was something i guess