Percy Jackson Avenger and S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent

2022 (2)

Two days and a very long, hot bath later, and I was back to being given entire forests of papers (with audio headsets, but apparently I also had to see the printed document even if I wasn't going to look at it) to try and catch me up to some of the newer protocols, handlers, idiots that I should probably avoid, that sort of thing.

I'd also wrangled an actual room instead of a creaky infirmary bed, so I sat on the bed with Clint and Nat beside me while all three of us ploughed stoically through our mountains of paperwork, and it almost felt like old times again.

I threw down the manila folder onto the duvet. "I'm sick of reading. Half of these fucking files are about the collapse of S.H.I.E.L.D., which, might I remind you, I was present for."

"Weren't you buried under the wreckage of HQ? Not sure I'd call that 'present'," Clint remarked dryly, lounging back with his combat boots on the bed (filthy heathen).

"Maybe so, but I was part of the orchestrating of Captain America's rousing speech, and I definitely knew that Rumlow was HYDRA without having to read it in the stupid file." flopped backwards onto the bed.

"You had nothing to do with the rousing speech," Nat retorted, throwing her own file at me. "You were busy being kidnapped and pretending to Hail HYDRA, right?"

"I was distracting them, okay." I blew my hair out of my face as I sat up again. "And I saved, like, 30 techies from being shot in the face by Rumlow."

"If you say so. Just read the damn thing and maybe you'll know." Nat threw another folder onto my lap.

"This is the fifth file they've given me about that one stupid day! What more is there to know?"

"Maybe which HYDRA agents are on the run? Maybe that might be useful, dumbass."

"I dunno, I mean, that's what you guys are for, right?"

"Oh my god!"

"Wait, Sitwell was HYDRA?"

"Yes."

"And Rollins?"

"Uh huh."

"Maybe I did need this file."

After almost two weeks of bothering everybody, Hill deemed me able enough to return to somewhere civilized, which I protested strongly against for obvious reasons. The argument conversation went something like this:

"I've literally just convinced HYDRA that I'm dead! Why are you resurrecting me so soon? It undermines all of my hard work over the last year!"

"You're going to go back to a S.H.I.E.L.D. military base in a private jet. It's not like you're flying commercial," (read in a deadpan voice: Hill was done by this point).

"I'm allergic to the idea of living back on base in New York. That city is 99% cameras."

"I will shoot you. You're less annoying when you're unconscious."

Strangely enough, I relented reasonably quickly, and the next thing I knew, I was in the back of a Mach 2 jet alongside my old team and zooming back to the good ol' US of A.

To say that I was apprehensive would have been quite the understatement, but, like any good agent, I did my very best to maintain a relaxed and put-together outer façade (I was screaming inside, though).

As the jet landed and we disembarked to head into the main body of the base, I turned to Hill. "Does this mean the shoot-on-sight order has been lifted?"

She shrugged. "Depends how much you irritate me."

That was so reassuring.

I breathed in the familiar smog. You know what? It was pretty good to be back, even if I was hurting, being threatened with death, on the run, and returning to an organization that had taken the blow of a lifetime.