Most people were afraid to die, to be erased from life and becoming nothing more than fading memories—they crave to make a mark on the world, to be remembered long after everyone that loved them die, to be immortal in death and over such bullshit.

Me? I was never that afraid of dying, living scared me a lot more. Death meant the end, the end of pain, suffering and everything else. Living was filled with pain, heart-ache, and other horrible things that was part of living, at least in death you were free from all that—or that was the theory anyway.

Turns out, Death was as big a bitch as Life was—which sucks major balls by the way.

Pain, agony, suffering, etc. she was feeling all of that and more. Her body screamed at her in pain, in distress, that something was seriously wrong with her but she couldn't move, couldn't even whimper, let alone scream, in pain—didn't she already die? Why was she still feeling such agony?

A heavy blow caught her side and her throat seized and burnt as a shrill scream was torn from it. She heaved choking sobs, eyes blind by an angry and pained red filter as she attempted to curl in on herself—she could barely hear men's voices over her choked sobs.

"She's still alive,"

"Was she the cause of the signal?"

"Has to be,"

"We'll take her back then."

A rough hand gripped her left arm hard, she screeched in pain as it felt like her bones were being forced out of her flesh only to been knocked out by a heavy blow to her head.

My first moments of my new life was filled with suffering—I hoped it wasn't setting the tone for the rest of my second life, no matter how short it may turn out to be.

I didn't know if I would receive any kindness from the men that had took me, I doubted it, and I had no idea where I was.

I had cried more in the few minutes they had conversed over me, like I was nothing more than an animal, than I had in years—I had always hated crying, when I was young I was always quick to tears as I was over-emotional as a brat, as a teenager and adult though, my emotions were more detached and I only truly cried once or twice a year, more often than not my eyes would leak with tears though I wasn't even the slightest upset which I found rather annoying.

I'm not embarrassed to tell you that my last thought as my consciousness faded was of my mother, her fierce pale blue eyes and her stubbornness—which I had been told I had inherited, just like I had inherited my father's so I had a double dose—and I swore I would survive whatever they threw at me, if only for her.

Consciousness was clawing at her mind, telling her it was time to wake up and face the world, and she attempted to groan only to choke on what felt like a tube shoved down her throat.

Blindly—she wasn't ready to face her fate—she reached up with her right hand and felt for the tape that was most likely keeping the tube attached to her—she remembered the horrible and irritating feeling when she had been ten or eleven and had been in hospital recovering from appendicitis (she had been two days away from death as she had been too stubborn to tell the doctors how much it really hurt) and her stomach swelled for no reason and the doctors wanted to find out why—and peeled away from her cheek before pulling the tube swiftly from her nose—the nurse had been horrified when she had done it herself when she was a child after she slapped her hands away from her face—with sheer determination.

"Looks like sleeping beauty has decided to wake," came a guy's snarky voice—it seemed almost muffled.

"Be quiet Pietro," chided a gentler girl's voice—clearer than the guy's voice, but still slightly muffled. "She been through a lot, she doesn't need your snide remarks."

"Haven't we all, Wanda?" Pietro said before falling silent.

The names tickled at the back of her mind and she decided she had to stop being a coward and face the world.

A dirty-white ceiling above her, the corner of her eye caught the dull look of metal and she tilted her head to the read to peer at the sink and toilet that met her gaze, they had kindly left a metal cup on the sink if she wanted to drink—her mouth felt dryer than a desert (she refused to even think of the cruder saying that some of her friends had a habit of saying, they nearly always involved a Nun) and her throat felt like sand-paper.

She attempted to brace herself on her left arm so she could leaver herself up on the camp-bed, only to pause as she didn't feel the rather rough material under her left arm—she had been dressed in a vest from what she could feel—and swallowed before turning her wary gaze on to her left arm—which had to be still there as she felt it move—and bit back a scream though she let out a string of curses at the gleaming silver arm that winked back at her in the dim light.

They had cut off her arm and replaced it with a silver arm! Was they trying to make her look like a Winter Soldier wannabe or cosplayer? Were these types of freaks people that decided to pretend to be Hydra—why the fuck they wanted to be messed up Nazis she didn't know or care as she had seen people dress up as the Akatsuki and they were all S-Class murdering criminal ninja before so she knew there was always some fans that wanted to be the bad-guy—and decided they needed their own Winter Soldier? Didn't they realise she was the wrong fucking gender! Sure she used to be mistaken as a boy with her short hair when she was a preteen but she had grown breasts for fuck's sake! They were C-cup on a good day! She wasn't flat-chested anymore!

"Impressive," Pietro whistled lowly tearing her attention from her silver—fucking silver and metal and not flesh like it was supposed to be—arm and her curses to look for him and finally took in the rest of her 'room' as she pushed herself up on the bed.

She was in a glass cell—Glass! Clear! Which meant people would be able to watch her piss and such—and she could see in the cell next to her was a pretty girl with dark long hair that was curled slightly and dark maybe greenish eyes dressed in a horrible grey dress, next to the girl's, Wanda's, cell was Pietro with dark streaked heavily with white and greenish eyes too staring at her with a hint of a smirk and a horrible click happened in the back of her mind as she stared with growing horror at Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch—they were actual twins and not two cosplayers.

(She would admit that Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson had a great alikeness to the characters they had played at the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, though these two were obviously related as they shared similar features and at the moment younger)

"How the fuck is this my life?" she asked herself, her voice horribly hoarse.

"I ask the same every day," Pietro smirked at her before blurring so he was a close to the glass that separated him from his twin and could see her more clearly—yep, they were the real deal.

The squeak of the tap being turned made her snap her head to her sink only to see it turning by itself before the cup caught the gushing water—which she was relieved to see was clean—before being shut off as the cup flew towards her.

She glanced at Wanda, whose eyes were narrowed in focus as she directed her hands, before she took the cup with both of her hands.

"Thank you," she said before she took a small sip which turned into a large gulp.

"Be careful," Wanda warned. "If you drink too fast, you'll be sick. You're body has gotten used to being feed by the tube."

She slowed herself down and set a dark glance at the tube she had carelessly threw to the side, its clear insides were filled with what she supposed was liquidised food.

"Yum," she grimaced when she forced herself to put her cup down slightly.

Pietro let out a short laugh.

"I like this one," he told Wanda. "She's has spirit."

Wanda gave me the first kindness in this new life. I didn't really know her fate, not fully as I had still been waiting impatiently for Age of Ultron before my untimely death and sort-of rebirth, but I swore that I wouldn't forget her small act of kindness.

"How long have I been here?" she asked, her side leaning against the glass that kept her separated from Wanda, her gaze on her third cup of water.

"Two weeks," Wanda told her with quiet sympathy in her gaze. "This is the first time you've fully waken up."

"Why am I not in pain?" she asked the question that had been bugging her since she first woke up, especially when she saw her shiny new arm, and remembered the agony that she had been in before they knocked her out.

"They pumped you with old Soldier's blood and experimented with some other peoples' blood," Pietro told her as he leaned against his glass wall, muscles very visible with his arms crossed over his broad chest. "You are now the proud owner of rapid-healing, even puts old Soldier's to shame as they messed you up badly just to see how well you healed—one doctor said it was a shame they gave you the new arm before the blood."

Like Wolverine's healing, she couldn't help but think. Cool power that didn't do anything to stop the pain, she wondered if it would slow her aging to basically non-existent or if she was getting ahead of herself.

"Why would I be proud?" she couldn't help the bitter certainness in her voice. "It'll only make me their favourite with whatever weird-ass experiments they want to do."

Wanda's lips pursed as she levitated some blocks while Pietro gave her an assessing look.

"You're smart too," he seemed approving. "What's your name?"

"It's—"her mouth shut with a click of her teeth because she couldn't remember her name and panic began to swell like a balloon in her chest—what was her name? Why couldn't she remember her mother calling her by her name? Why couldn't she remember anyone calling her by her name?—"I can't remember."

Wanda gave her a sad smile and Pietro kept his silence for once.

"I'm sure it'll come back," Wanda's tone was as unconvinced as she was deep down. "Or you could always chose a new name?"

Names are funny things aren't they? You don't really think they matter that much till you lose yours, but isn't that the story of everything? I once was bored enough to look up what it meant.

Name, noun: A word or set of words by which a person or thing is known, addressed, or referred to.

Wanda and Pietro had their names, they had another name to that'll the world will one day know. Bucky Barnes—stuck in his frozen box—had a name, the Winter Soldier, though he didn't yet remember is real name—he would one day, when he came face to face with his best friend.

Me? I had no name, I couldn't remember the name that my dad chose for me and took my mum six-months to learn how to say it right, the name that I got used to teachers saying wrong, and the name I once wanted to change because people found it so difficult to say and remember. I was just she for now.

Everyone had a name, something no-one could really take away, accept me it seemed.

There was a mirror in her cell, she had to clean it to be able to see her reflection and when she did, she had to pause and stare.

She used to have brown eyes, she knew. How many times had her mum said that they were just like her dad's? They had been a deep brown which she liked to think looked like they had an amber tint in some light while in others they looked like deep pools of chocolate—they most likely didn't and it had just been her wishful thinking—and sometimes she was sure there was a hint of blue in them.

She could remember complaining once to her mum that she wanted her eyes, blue eyes like her half-brother had and her nephew had. A pale blue that was like the pale pretty clear blue sky when happy but looked like shards of coloured ice when angry.

It seemed her wish was finally granted, in a way at least.

Her right eye was the pale blue that her mum's was while the left was her normal dark brown. She had heterochromia eyes now. To her they would be a reminder of her parents—the mother being the only person she had been certain she loved and the father long dead and thought of in indifference instead of betrayed hurt and anger he used to be thought of in, both were fighters in their own way though Dad's had been more obvious when he had cancer—and of her old life and she hoped it would give her the strength needed to survive whatever hell Hydra decided to put her through.

Her hair was different too. Still the same dark brown shade that she was used too—made darker because of all the times she had dyed her hair black—but was longer—no-longer just brushing past her chin and her shoulders in the back—as it brushed her shoulder-blades and had the curl that her mum's had.

Her skin was still pale—she had once been told that snowmen had more colour than she did, but had thankfully never been compared to the Cullens—though her features were different, less round with a more almost pixie-like look to them—wider eyes, upturned small nose, full-ish lips, heart-shaped face—and she had lost the extra two inches of height that she had been so proud of gaining when she should have stopped growing, reducing her to a petite five foot three inches.

The vest was an old grey colour—they had taken her bra just in case she decided to use it as a weapon (the image that passed through her mind made her lips twitch in an effort not to laugh) and she was glad she had small perky breasts (which Mum had often complained about never having) though she was annoyed that she had to keep adjusting the top as it was at least one size too big—and some old jogging trousers that she had drawn tightly and knotted so they stayed on her rather slim hips—she hadn't been magically blessed with killer-curves in her second-life which she was okay with as she thought it was over-rated really and she didn't enjoy a lot of male attention, too much time spent watching crime shows, and it was always good to be underestimated which she would with her petite height and rather youthful look.

I had no name, when I looked into the mirror a stranger stared back and I was in the hands of Hydra. My second-life fuckin' sucked at the moment. Please get better?

There was only one door to her cell in the only actual wall of the cell—it was the wall with the sink and toilet attached to it—and had a little flap for them to shove a plastic tray of food in—no cutlery in case they attempted to used it on themselves—and the food was such a stereotype that part of her despaired silently.

A lump of white bread—an actual lump that had been torn from a loaf of bread—a bowl of warm soup though they were kind enough to make sure they were given carrot-sticks and apple-slices with their meal.

Normally, she was the pickiest eater on the planet but she didn't have that luxury anymore so she decided to get the worse out of the way and gulped down the soup—she hated soup—before turning her attention to the only three things she liked.

It was as she crunched on a carrot-stick that she decided on a name.

"Hope," she said to herself.

"What was that?" Wanda asked as she nibbled on a slice of apple.

"I want to be called Hope," she told her fellow prisoner.

Pietro snorted from his place sprawled on his camp-bed—his tray already empty as he didn't do things at normal pace like other people.

"Really? Hope?" he asked with an overwhelming amount of incredulous in his tone. "That's what you've come up with."

"Pietro," Wanda chided with a frown.

"I don't want to forget to hope, I don't want to give it up either," she explained to the twins softly and Pietro didn't shot a comment back.

"I think it's a pretty name, Hope," Wanda smiled at her through the glass before returning to her meal.

The newly named Hope smiled as she crunched into her last carrot-stick.

Hope, noun: a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen, a feeling of trust.

Hope, verb: want something to happen or be the case.

The meaning of the name Hope was 'expectation, belief'.

Was it an unimagined name? Sure, but I hoped it kept me believing that things would get better in the end. That this couldn't be what my second-life would always be, could it?

AN: So this is my very first self-insert fic, probably won't up date this for a bit as I want to pump out at least another chapter for Uzumaki Treasure today. Please let me know what you think.

Cassie x