"You doing okay?" I look up at Tony's voice, raising an eyebrow. "Barton told me what happened."
"I'm fine." I reply easily. "A little annoyed, and extraordinarily pissed off, but nothing that I haven't dealt with before." I focus back on my laptop, leaning forward.
"Yeah, but you haven't quit being an Agent before." Tony points out. "And your god is brooding in my library."
"Fury hasn't done things like this before." I reply, finishing my email to Jean. If I didn't get a response from her soon, I'd call the mansion. See if I could find out about any rising threats against mutants.
"Your sister could be relocated to the tower." I look up at that, surprised. "Face it. She'd be safe here, and so would her man. It makes sense." I give him a long look.
"Are you telling me this to ask my opinion, or are you telling me this because you've already done it?" I ask. "Because I think it's the latter." Tony shrugs, and I let out a long breath. "I haven't talked to her since she was arrested. I'm not sure that was your best idea."
"I have a lot of ideas that don't seem great at first." I shake my head, refocusing on my laptop. "What are you doing?"
"Well, since SHIELD isn't working out for me, I'm doing my own recon. Someone is after me, so I'm going to find out who." Tony walks over, looking at the news feed I was scrolling through.
"You're the most powerful mutant on the planet. Can't you just zap whoever is after you?"
"Really?" I ask, shooting Tony a disbelieving look. "'Zap them?"
"I don't know how you work." Tony replies, raising his hands in mock surrender. I roll my eyes.
"I'm sure I could just "zap" them, but think about it. They weren't only confident enough to come after me, but to kill my brother as well. If they're confident enough for that, they've got to have a reason why. I'm not going to ignore that just because I'm extremely powerful." My laptop dings, and I turn to glance at the incoming email. I frown when I see that it isn't Jean, but my SHIELD resignation form. "That was fast." I mutter under my breath.
"Recon?"
"SHIELD. They must have really wanted me gone." I see Tony frown and glance towards the doorway.
"Your sister should be here by tomorrow morning." He says quietly. "I'll uh, leave you be." He moves towards the door, and I let out a long breath.
"Tony?" He turns in the doorway. "Thank you."
"Pft. It's no problem. I've got your back. We're the dream team, right?" He smiles. "Brucie needs my help in the lab, so I'll be there if you need me." He disappears out the door, and I can't help the small smile that appears on my face. Tony may constantly act like he doesn't care, but little things like this proved differently.
I turn back to my computer, quickly beginning the SHIELD resignation form.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Ophelia!" The elevator doors had only been for a second, and I heard the shout. My sister sprints out of the elevator, and I half expect her to tackle me in a hug. Instead, she stops a few feet from me. "Henry's dead."
"Yeah." I nod once. "Yeah, he is." Her bottom lip quivers. "Cordelia..." She lurches forward, wrapping me in a hug.
"They wouldn't tell me anything. They just said that Henry was killed and that we had to pack and come with them." She squeezes me tightly, and I hug her back, feeling helpless. I look to the man Cordelia had been traveling with, her fiancé, and he simply shakes his head.
"Henry was working for some bad people." I murmur. "They killed him to keep him quiet. We were worried that they might come after you and your fiancé, so we needed to protect you. That meant moving you here for now." She nods, letting me go.
"Did they tell mom and dad?" She asks quietly.
"Your parents have been informed." Nat speaks up. "But they're still in prison. They have no other privileges." My sister hesitantly nods, and I see her fiancé place a comforting hand on her back.
"I can, ah, show you your room?" Pepper speaks up, breaking the silence. "Just follow me." The fiancé picks up the bags, letting my sister walk slightly in front of him.
They spend the morning settling in to their room, and I head to the gym. Jean had emailed me back, telling me that she would shoot me a call later that afternoon. So, for the rest of the day, I had to find something to occupy my time.
And I really wanted to use my swords to chop things into tiny pieces.
Loki had wandered into the gym, but had realized that I wasn't in the mood to talk. He had wandered over to the range, and was mindlessly tossing daggers at targets. I, on the other hand, was destroying another one of the punching dummies. One clean slice would cut off the head, and a few more would leave the thing in pieces.
"Um, Ms. Ophelia? Agent? I'm not sure what to call you." The thumps of the daggers against the target stills for a moment, and I know that Loki is keeping an eye on me.
"Ms. I'm not an agent at the moment." I inform my sister's fiancé. "And you are? I mean, your name." The man shifts anxiously.
"Weston Duke." He sticks out his hand, and I press the small button that retracted the blades on my swords. I stick the cylinders in my back pocket and quickly shake his hand.
"What can I do for you?" I ask. Weston glances down at the destroyed dummy, unconsciously taking a step to the side. I let out a snort. "Don't worry. I won't do that to you unless you give me a reason to."
"Right. Of course." He rolls his shoulders, setting them. "I wanted to talk to you about Cordelia." I raise an eyebrow, but nod and move towards the bench. Weston follows, sitting next to me as I crack open a water bottle.
"I've known Cordelia since our freshman year of college." He starts. "We were best friends for years before I got the balls to ask her out." I chuckle, motioning for him to continue. "The entire time I've known her, she's always talked about you. She told me about what happened between you and your family. She's been looking for you for longer than I've known her, and when she found you, she was ecstatic. Then her parents came by the apartment." He glances towards Loki, who has resumed tossing daggers, clearly eavesdropping. "She was thrilled that they wanted to see you again. I told her it didn't sound right, but she was so determined to..."
"Make us a family again." I sigh, finishing the sentence. "Yeah. I noticed the strike team. She surprised me with them."
"She didn't have any involvement in that." Weston insists.
"I know." I reply quickly. "I know that. The second I saw her in that interrogation room, I knew."
"That incident destroyed her." Weston informs me. "She came home crying, and has been devastated since. She was just trying to bring you all together, and even though she saw your parents kick you out, she didn't want to believe that they would pull something like that." I purse my lips, looking down at the ground. "And when we got the news that Henry had been killed-"
"What is your goal with this conversation?" I cut him off. "To tell me why my sister is upset? She has every right to be upset. Our brother is dead, and her life has been completely overturned." The thumping of daggers against the targets stops again, and I turn to shoot a glare at the back of Loki's head.
"I wondered if you would talk to her?" He speaks after a second. "I love her to death, but I'm not who she needs right now." I let out a long breath, nodding.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'll talk to her." I sigh. "I just have to figure out what to say to her."
"Thank you." I set my water bottle down, pulling one of the cylinders out of my back pocket. "Just one more thing?"
"Yeah?" I press the button on the side of the cylinder, letting the blade shoot out. The sharp metal is half an inch from his neck, and his eyes go wide.
"If you hurt my sister, I will kill you." I whisper. He audibly gulps, and nods quietly. I smile. "Good. Glad we have an understanding."