The New Agent - An Avengers FanFiction

Chapter 10

My peaceful, dreamless sleep was too quickly shattered by the coordinated alarm clocks. Groggily, I peeled myself out of bed and went through all my morning motions as if I was on autopilot. I only really came to my senses when I looked into the mirror before leaving the room and noticed that my usually bright green eyes looked a much duller shade and my honey brown skin had darkened drastically beneath my eyes. Worried that the dark circles would only indicate that my encounter with Loki the previous day had seriously affected me, I quickly went back into the bathroom and rummaged through my toiletry kit until I found a pot of concealer. After dabbing some on my face until I was convinced that no one would suspect anything I glanced at the clock and groaned. I was going to be late again and even though I knew that Fury would cut me some slack I was quite sure that he was going to be pissed. I sprinted out of my room and only came to a halt when I was right outside the dining hall. I peeked in and as I had expected, it was empty save one person - Fury. And he didn't look happy. I was about to spew out some weak excuse when he held his hand up.

"Don't bother." he said and looked at me with an expression that I had never expected to see on Fury face - pity. I remembered seeing the same expression on people's faces when my mother died. It used to annoy me then and it really annoyed me now. But just as quickly as it had appeared the expression disappeared and Fury's face morphed into his signature 'I'm pissed off so don't piss me off more'.

"Follow me Agent." he then said although his voice sounded a tad kinder than usual. That worried me because I didn't want everyone to be walking on eggshells around me. There were only so many sympathetic looks which I could handle before my fuse blew. I was really praying that wouldn't happen. Most of the time SHEILD agents showed no emotion. As in a matter of fact most of the agents had been through worse tragedies than I had. I did acknowledge the fact that those agents hadn't had their minds picked at by an insane god and all the things they had been trying to forget had not been pulled out of little corners of their brain and replayed in their mind in a much more horrific and emotionally scarring manner. But I still hoped and expected them to treat me normally. But luck wasn't on my side because by the time we had reached our destination I had received so many 'Oh you poor thing' looks that I had clenched my palms into tight fists and dug my nails into my skin hard enough to draw blood to prevent myself from lashing out.

I had been so preoccupied with keeping myself under control that I didn't really bother to wonder where Fury was taking me. I only started to pay attention to my surroundings when we stopped and I was shocked to see that we were standing outside the doors leading to the lab. I was struck with a sense of déjà vu. I just hoped that this time a crazy god wouldn't appear and claim to want to take over the world. One of those was more than enough. As Fury punched in his code to enter the lab I glanced through the glass doors and saw Stark and Dr. Banner frantically working and I couldn't help but wonder what I was doing here. Initially when I had joined SHEILD I had wanted to get into research and development but halfway through my training, when we had to give a mandatory field exam my superiors and I realized that I was more cut out for field work and I started training to be a field agent instead. I still remembered how to use most of the equipment in the lab though and I realized that that was probably the reason Fury was putting me here along with the very likely fact the he didn't know what else to do with me. While waiting for his code to be verified Fury told me that he that I had to stay I the lab to keep an eye on what was going on and also help out in any way that I can. The hydraulic doors slid open with a silent hiss and I followed Fury in.

"Any progress on the Tesseracts location?" Fury asked. Dr. Banner shook his head dejectedly causing Fury to grunt. After a brief pause told them to get back to work and keep searching and then turned and gave me a sharp nod and then marched out.

It had been ages since I had last been in a lab but everything I had learned quickly came back to me. I tapped a screen and it glowed to life. I glanced over the data displayed on it and even though it was much more complex than what I was used to I was able to understand quite a bit. Just as I killed the screen I felt someone approach me. Looking back at the screen I saw a reflection of Tony standing behind me with an eyebrow raised.