ELIJAH DIDN'T LOVE BEING knocked out. It wasn't the act of losing consciousness that bothered him, it was the act of regaining it. He hated the grogginess that took over his body when he woke up, and the few seconds it took him for his eyes to focus on his surroundings.
"It was him."
And after hearing Steve repeat those same words over and over again while they sat in the back of a Hydra vehicle, being taken to God knows where, Elijah was really praying someone would smash him in the head with a gun again.
He wasn't above paying them for such an act of service.
"He looked right at me like he didn't even know me," Steve said in disbelief and where his voice should have encouraged sympathy, Elijah's action of slamming the back of his head repeatedly into the car wall altered the atmosphere slightly.
"We get it, Rogers. Your fuckboy from the 40s is back and he doesn't remember you," Elijah said with a monotonous voice, "you've only said it repeatedly for 20 minutes in as many ways."
"Someone's jealous," Sam whispered across his best friend and before he was met with the brute of Elijah's irritation, he continued, "how is that even possible. It was, like, 70 years ago right?"
"Zola," Steve started. Elijah made the mistake of looking over at Natasha. She looked tired, weak almost, and Elijah found himself gulping every time his eyes trailed towards the blood seeping from her wound, "Bucky's whole unit was captured in '43. Zola experimented on him, whatever he did helped Bucky survive the fall. They must have found him-"
"None of this is your fault, Steve," Natasha was quick to say, looking away after her words to try and conceal the amount of pain she was really in.
"Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky."
"You should be happy. Not many people can say their best friend came back to life... well I can but that's beyond the point," Elijah said with an out of place smile, "and if he's more than just a friend, you can get back to fu-"
"Ignore him," Sam said sharply, hissing slightly at Elijah, "he's squeamish around blood and compensating by being a bastard."
"You were in the army," Natasha said.
"We've already had this conversation, Romanoff," Elijah rolled his eyes, leaning his head against the wall, "and it's not like I joined to fight. Serving this country was never something I wanted to do."
"Than why join?" the Russian asked once more.
"I had no other choice. No money to my name, no home I loved going back to," he answered, missing the confusion in Natasha's face. She'd known him when he was younger and had no idea he had any problems, "I was running and the army was the only place I could think of that welcomed 18-year-old runaways."
"What were you running from?" she asked once more and Elijah tensed. He moved his head slowly and looked at Steve. The captain was too preoccupied with his thoughts to pay much attention to what he was saying, unlike Sam who was hanging on to every word Elijah uttered.
He'd asked Elijah a few times why he enlisted but the Frenchman had never given him a serious answer. And with the way he folded his hands on his lap and closed his eyes, Sam thought Natasha would get the same now.
He was quickly proven wrong when Elijah answered, his voice barely audible but full of emotion.
"My father."
Another thing Elijah hated was silence and he was humble enough to admit the quiet absolutely scared him. The van succumbing to a second of silence bothered him for two reasons, unknowns tended to lurk in the quiet and it was very obvious that Sam and Natasha wanted him to elaborate.
"What, Eli-"
"We need a doctor here," Elijah was quick to cut off Sam and his eyes remained close as he spoke. If we don't put pressure on that wound, she's gonna bleed out right here, in the truck."
Everyone missed Elijah lick his lips as a guard pulled out an electric rod, catching their attention. He didn't open his eyes as he heard the rod pressed against the other guard's body, knocking him out and only did when he heard a female voice echo through the room that didn't belong to Natasha.
"Ah. That thing was squeezing my brain," was what she said. The voice belonged to a brunette Elijah didn't know but by the way she looked at Natasha and Steve with familiarity, he connected that the avengers knew her, "whose these guys?"
"Elijah Davis," he answered, wiping all emotion off his face as he grinned at the new ally, "charmed."
It took a hole being burnt into the floor of a steel van with a laser for Elijah to finally understand what all the hype around SHIELD was. If he didn't hate being told what to do, he might've asked to join.
"GSW. She's lost at least a pint," the new woman, Maria Hill as Elijah had learned was her name, shouted out as they entered a secret facility. Sam and Steve were supporting a bleeding Natasha while Elijah elected to stay as far away from her as the narrow corridor allowed.
"Maybe two," Sam interjected, missing the soft whisper of Elijah stating that it was actually a pint and a half.
"Let me take her," the doctor, Maria had been talking to, said as he jogged towards them.
"She'll want to see him first," Maria refused the request. Everyone looked at each other in confusion but followed the agent into a room, pushing away plastic curtains as they did so to clear the view.
"About damn time," the man they'd come to see said as he lay in a hospital bed. He honestly looked like shit, Elijah could see the bandages press against the fabric of his shirt and the subtle scent of blood in the room drove him insane.
"Fury," Steve breathed out, obviously shocked but since Elijah had no idea who this 'Fury' was, he simply whistled and said.
"You look terrible, someone really beat the shit outta you."
... Sam had never been closer to sewing Elijah's lips shut than he was in this very moment.
"Lacerated spinal column, cracked sternum, shattered collarbone, perforated liver and one hell of a headache," Fury simply said, not at all bothered by Elijah's words. In fact, he looked rather amused.
"Don't forget your collapsed lung," the doctor, who'd moved to start treating Natasha's injury, called out.
"Right, let's not forget that. Otherwise, I'm good," there was something about Fury's delivery that made Elijah choke back a laugh. Sam knew that just like that it was decided, Elijah liked this man.
"They cut you open. Your heart stopped," Natasha stated.
"Tetrodotoxin B. Slows the pulse to one beat a minute," he explained, "Banner developed it for stress. Didn't work so great for him, but we found a use for it."
"Why all the secrecy? Why not just tell us?" Steve asked.
"Any attempt on the Director's life had to look successful," Maria stated and Elijah perked up. If this was the man in charge, Elijah was more than ready to sign up for SHIELD.
"Can't kill you if you're already dead. Besides, I wasn't sure who to trust," Fury turned so his good eye was locked on the Frenchman in the room, "you're like me in that sense, Elijah Davis."
"How'd you know who I am?" Elijah was quick to ask, not because Fury knew his name but because the way he'd said Davis made it clear he knew it didn't belong to him. If he knew Davis wasn't his real name, he knew what was and if he knew that, he knew exactly why he was running from his father and that was not a conversation Elijah was ready to have.
"I know a lot of things, Davis. Some say I know everything," Fury answered, "so tell me, can I trust you?"
Elijah stared down at Fury for a moment, everyone's eyes on him at the easy connection that there was more to the lewd man than they originally thought.
"No," he answered after a beat and he wasn't surprised to find Maria's gun trained on him. He paid it no mind as he continued speaking, "Sam's fighting for whatever the hell this is and years ago, I vowed to help him in every fight he finds himself in. That's why I'm here. I haven't been paying attention enough to truly understand what this fight is or who it's with, but Sam's involved, so I am too. You can't trust me, you shouldn't trust me. I'm here for him, not you."
Fury simply nodded at that answer, content with what had been said. When nothing more was shared between the two men, Elijah turned on his heel and moved towards the door.
"The smell of blood in here is suffocating, I'll be in the room over," he announced as he strolled out, missing the confusion that quickly filled the faces of everyone in the room. The same question on their minds.
What smell of blood?