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𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐎𝐧𝐞: 𝐋𝐢𝐞𝐬

HYDRA Base, Austrian Alps

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Allie's day had started off like any other day.

It had been a few weeks since Allie's 'punishment' and she was back in Schmidt's good graces for the time being. All it had taken was a successful mission against a small group of French forces and she was back to being his favorite soldier again.

But, she was definitely not his favorite person.

Soldier, sure. She was great on missions. Perfect, even.

But apparently, her 'snippy attitude' and 'lack of regard for her superiors' made her 'an unreliable and inefficient soldier'. In other words, they thought she was a pain in the ass. Which personally, she thinks is a load of crap.

She gets the work done so what's wrong with having some fun while she does it?

But that's aside from the point. Since Allie was stuck in the overwatch rooms with nothing to do but watch the screens for hours on end, Schmidt thought that she had learnt her lesson as it had been a while since she had 'acted up'.

When in reality she had actually created her own darts board from semi-important looking documents and was practicing her aim with her left hand. And when she grew tired of that, she drank coffee until she was hyper enough to continue with her opposite hand.

Her days were in other words, utterly terrible.

That was up until a couple of days ago when Schmidt had sent her to France to collect information on the S.S.R, otherwise known as the Strategic Scientific Reserve (Personally, she thinks that they just ran out of words to use for acronyms and just winged it).

The S.S.R is a top-secret Allied war agency and the mortal enemies of HYDRA. It had been rumored that the S.S.R were trying to create a serum to would breed a race of super-soldiers to be deployed in the War. And as Allie had learned on her lovely trip to a small town in France, this initiative was called Project Rebirth.

And not only was Project Rebirth being completed in America, at the head of the project was Abraham Erskine.

Erskine was the closest thing that Allie had as a father. He had always tried to shield her from the true horrors of HYDRA and he did his best to make sure she turned out better than the rest. He saw how the children in Projekt Fenrir ended up and he made it his mission to make sure she ended up better.

He was the reason she had such a witty tongue and cracked jokes to piss off others. He was the reason why she knew so much about science, especially chemistry.

Erskine used to sneak her out of her room after curfew and take her to his lab. She would hide in the bottom basket of a steel medical table that was covered in a pristine white cloth and try not to make a sound as they walked past the soldiers on duty.

There he would tell her stories about his life before the War and his family. He said that she reminded him of his daughter Marlene who he hadn't seen in years and he taught her everything that he didn't have the time to teach Marlene.

But then one day he disappeared, leaving Allie with a sarcastic tongue that no one would tolerate and a brain for science that was never used again.

He left her alone and she still doesn't know why?

She can't remember doing anything to upset him. She knew that he hated HYDRA but he promised her he wouldn't leave unless she was with him.

And he broke her trust just like he broke that promise.

Seeing his name on those documents made her remember all the anger and resentment that she had buried away. But with that anger and resentment, there was love and nostalgia. She wished things were the same as what they had been when he was still around. But time had moved on and so had she.

She finished the mission with relative ease.

Her team had wiped out the small camp of men within minutes. They freed their captured soldiers and, according to Schmidt, 'returned their enemies to their eternal punishment of damnation'.

Allie thought that that was a bit harsh but she carried out her orders nonetheless. Well, she partly carried out her orders.

There were boys there, some that were no older than 17. She saw how they almost pissed themselves when she had burst through the door into their cabin as they cowered in fear behind their drawers. So she spared them because men know the promises that war holds. Boys just know how to be naive fools.

When Schmidt heard about their success in France and the information that they had intercepted about project Rebirth, his lips actually pulled into a rare smile and he congratulated Allie. She still can't even believe it! Schmidt smiling and congratulating her on the same day! Who would have thought?

And in return for her 'great servitude to HYDRA', Schmidt so kindly gave her a promotion.

She now fetches files for him.

How great.

And that brings her to where she is now, once again entering the inmate cages just so she can reach the stupid file room.

She quickly rushes down the hallway of cages, keeping her eyes trained on the dirtied floor in front of her so that she can avoid looking at the emaciated frames of the prisoners who stare pleadingly at her to free them. She tunes out their screams of pain and suffering, repeating the mantra in her head that she can't do anything for them.

She twists her hands tightly together and she walks through the cell block, trying to ignore the feeling that the hallway of cages are closing in on top of her when a sudden sound breaks her from her reverie. Up ahead, Allie hears the almost deafening wail of a baby that is trying to be shushed by their mother, who coos at the child urgently.

Allie watches on as one of the newbie HYDRA soldiers stalks over to the pair, glaring heavily at the disturbance as he pulls out his leather whip intimidatingly. The warning doesn't go unnoticed by the woman who's actions quickly become more frantic at the threating presence of the guard who dangles the whip in front of her menacingly.

But the child doesn't understand their dire situation and somehow finds it within itself to scream even louder. This causes a sardonic sneer to pull at the guard's lips and he grips the bars separating him and the woman threateningly.

"Beeil dich, Frau, mir geht die Geduld aus. / Hurry up, woman, I'm running out of patience." He taunts thickly in his German tongue as he cracks the whip against the cool concrete floor.

Allie sends a deathly glare towards the man as she approaches the scene, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. It's a baby! Of course it is going to cry, especially if you put it in a place like this. She even wants to cry and she is just walking down the hallway.

The sound of her footsteps that echo down the hallway causes the guard to turn around and he gives her a haughty smirk. "Agent Williams." He greets her, still clutching the whip in his hand tightly as the baby's cry ring out around them.

"Soldat," she nods as her lips pull into a tight line. "You are new aren't you?" She asks, already knowing the answer.

"Yes, Agent."

"Well, just some friendly words of advice." She says snidely ." I would highly recommend that you leave the lady and her child alone if you want it silenced. Your presence is not doing any wonders." She speaks and watches as the mother slowly crawls her way to the front of the cell still holding the weeping baby.

"I have a right to punish unruly prisoners Ms. Williams, and you have no authority to tell me otherwise. So move aside." He declares cockily, eyeing her up and down as if she was a piece of meat.

"Oh, I'm sorry Soldat. Let me rephrase." She responds, quirking an eyebrow derisively. "I meant to say that you will leave this woman and her child alone or else you will end up in the same cell as them. So move aside."

The soldier looks at her in contempt and puffs his chest out in an attempt to seem less frightened then what he really is. This is his first time meeting the Allie Williams and he doesn't want to be seen as weak. "I highly doubt Schmidt would let that happen."

Allie almost growls at his stupidity. Like Schmidt would give a damn about this lowly guard. There are millions of other men that are lining up to take his spot and Schmidt knows that. He doesn't even care about Allie's job and she has been here much longer than this incompetent prick.

"You won't even make it to Schmidt, agent." She warns him, venom dripping from her voice.

Thankfully, the guard recognizes that there is no possible outcome where he will come out victorious in this situation so he drops his head to the ground angrily and moves along to the next row of cells. Allie chooses not to comment on the not so incoherent words that fall from his lips when he thinks she isn't listening. Instead, with a proud grin, she turns to take a step back to continue down the hallway to the archives.

But her movement is immediately halted when a frail, feminine hand encloses around her ankle gently, nearly causing Allie to trip and land face-first on the concrete. She whips back around, ready to scream at whoever has grabbed her, but she calms down when she sees that it is just the mother of the child. The mother's eyes are welling with tears as she lets go of Allie's hand.

"Thank you, thank you so much..." she sobs as she rocks the tiny baby back and forth.

The woman is unhealthily frail, and it is almost like the life has been sucked out of her. Her dark matted hair falls around her face, accentuating her ghostly appearance. Her emaciated frame looks like it would barely be able to support her is she was to stand up on her own two feet. The outline of each rib is visible under her thin woven shirt and her face is so sunken in that you could picture her skull under her bruised and sickly skin.

Allie resists the urge to laugh at the woman's comment. Why should she thank Allie when it is people like her that are the reason that she is in here? This woman looks like she has been in here for months on end, imprisoned by HYDRA, and yet she thanks a HYDRA agent for sticking up for her.

She should be angry, livid even.

But Allie just nods at the mother. Her lips are pulled up into a tight smile and then she turns around, returning back to the task at hand.

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It doesn't take long for Allie to navigate her way around the base and find her way to the archives. But at the sight of the dreaded room, she rolls her eyes in irritation.

It is going to take her hours to find those bloody files that Schmidt wants. The archives are drowning in documents that date back to hundreds of years ago and they all have more than likely have not been correctly filed ever since their existence began. So for the next couple of hours, she will be tediously searching through all of the boxes in this room just to find a single file on Project Valkyrie.

As she nears the archives, the guard steps in front of the door and watches as Allie approaches with a smirk covering his face. Just by the look on his face, she can tell he is one of Gerald's friends which comes as a surprise to Allie. She didn't think he had any friends.

"Orders from Zola to retrieve files." She speaks and straightens her stance. The guard watches her warily as he steps aside, granting her access to the room. She quickly makes her way inside, passing the guard at the door who is eyeing her cautiously until the door closes, finally separating the two.

But as Allie turns around, she lets out a defeated sigh as she stares at the seemingly endless rows of documents. The file room is filled with steel shelves that hold rows and rows of old, cardboard boxes that are brimming with paper files. The dim lighting also adds to the illusion that the archives is a never-ending room filled with enough documents that would allow Allie to build her own paper town.

As Allie slowly navigates her way around the room, she begins to think that there must surely be a more efficient way to store all this information. And to think that Schmidt gave her this job as a reward!

With an audible groan, Allie begins to comb her way through the documents, looking for anything that starts with the letter 'V'.

From what she could gather, Valkyrie is the name of a never seen before bomber plane that Schmidt created to end the war for good. It is many years away from becoming a reality but the production of this plane is going to begin soon. The way that Schmidt has talked about this plan has made Allie very wary. Nothing good can ever come out of so much loss but somehow this plane is supposed to be the exception. It is supposed to happily bring everyone all together under HYDRA rule.

She calls bullshit.

Shaking her head in annoyance, she continues walking down the aisle searching for the boxes labeled with the letter 'V' and finally her eyes find the row that houses the boxes that she is looking for. She walks down right to the end of the shelf and pulls out the 3 boxes that she is looking for but stops when she spots a file that piques her interest.

Right at the end of the row, she can see her own file hanging out of the box marked with a big W at the front. From the look of it, she can safely assume that it had been opened recently making her curiosity grow even further.

Cautiously she reaches out to grab ahold of the manilla file and holds it in her hands out in front of her. With an air of nonchalance and a rebellious smile pulling at her lips, she flicks it open and begins scanning the white papers inside.

Inside the file, she finds her personal information, including her soldier identification and a black and white photo of herself that hangs by the top of the page. "Geez, they couldn't have picked a nicer photo could they?" She mumbles as she stares at herself with a quirked brow. She will gladly admit that she looked absolutely hideous.

It seems that she suffers from the strange condition of 'complete unattractiveness in the face of photographic devices'. The symptoms only seem to show when cameras are around strangely enough and they consist of half-opened eyes, an awkward crossbreed between a smile and a grimace and some very strange forehead furrowing.

Forcefully pulling her gaze away from her photo, she reads the date printed across the top corner which shows that this was printed yesterday.

Strange, Allie thinks as she continues reading.

Her eyes scan down the page but stop as she stares at her parent's names. She can't remember ever having parents. She never had a mother to soothe her tears or a father to protect her from all the bad people that plague the world. She has no one.

Nothing ever seems to stick for Allie. None of her family is in the picture and she has no one that she considers a friend. Not even a close acquaintance. The only thing that she has is herself. But sometimes that isn't enough.

She struggles just like everyone else does. She struggles to force herself out of bed when she knows that her day will be spent all by herself. Having to wake up knowing that soon absolutely alone turns into being completely lonely. Knowing that she has no one to laugh at her jokes and to pick her up when she stumbles and falls.

And as she reads their names she doesn't feel anything. Nothing at all.

These are people that she never go to know. And sure, they may have been good people but good people die all the time. They don't deserve to die but it happens to all of us.

But as she keeps on reading, she begins to put together the pieces of her life.

Her parents worked for British Intelligence. They worked for the same people that she has been taught to hate and ordered to kill on sight. The same people that she is fighting against in the war.

But if they worked for British Intelligence, then why the hell did they take Allie? HYDRA has nothing against killing the children of their enemies because they are still their enemies regardless of age. They must have needed her for something but she can't recall ever doing anything that was different from any other child at HYDRA. She was and still is just a regular soldier.

So why was Allie any different?

She flicks over to the next page and finds a mission report dated back to June 5th, 1925. Her 5th birthday. Her eyes scan over the report, not stopping until she reaches the very last word of the page. That word being the signature of Arnim Zola, the man who orchestrated the entire mission.

Tension had grown in her body as she read about the sheer brutality of the mission and the horrific deaths of her parents. She was completely puzzled at the fact that her parents had worked directly against HYDRA, even having arrested members themselves a few weeks prior to their deaths. That should have surely guaranteed her fate as a corpse rotting in the ground alongside her parents.

But it didn't and Arnim Zola knows why.

Seeing that man's signature caused her hands to tighten around the edges of the page in pure, white-hot anger. She doesn't even need to know why he signed off on the mission because she knows that he had taken away her chance at a normal life. He even wrote it down himself that both her parents had died protecting her. They had loved her and he took away her opportunity to still be loved for the first time in her life.

Allie sinks to the floor slowly, staring at the horrible white walls of the room. Her breathing becomes silent as she envisions the life that she could have had. An invisible hand clasps over her mouth, holding in the scream of anger that she so desperately wants to let out. Her head spins with rage almost like a carousel with each thought gripping her mind and sending her even further into insanity.

She just wants to run, to get away from this place. To get away from the voices in her head that scream at her for being so stupid. So naive.

And to think that now she is apart of the organization that murdered her parents. The organization that took away all that she had known and everything that she has ever wanted.

They made her into a replica of the exact same people that had executed her mother and father in cold blood. All the things that she has done in the name of HYDRA, murdering so many people, leaving their families exactly how she is feeling now.

She is that monster that she has tried so hard not to become.

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A/N - Hey everyone,

I hope that you enjoyed this chapter! I understand that so far everything is quite intense and potentially confusing so feel free to ask for clarification on Allie's story.

I hope you guys stick around for the rest of the story because I can say that things are about to get interesting.

And onto the questions,

1. What did you guys think of the chapter?

2. What do you guys think of Allie so far?

3. Do you have any predictions for the next couple of chapters?

Anyway, that's enough from me, have an amazing day/night !!!

-Grace xx