The mission was an absolute, complete and total failure.
I was sitting on one of the bench seats on the right side of the jet. It was the only seat near a window other than the cockpit and given that I never got my pilot's license I figured taking that spot wouldn't have been one of my greatest ideas. I had been standing in the corner for the first thirty minutes of flight time, waiting to see if someone wanted it but nobody else had taken it so I figured someone might as well enjoy the view. Clint had wisely taken over the pilot's chair although I had no idea where he was taking us. We had been told that in the aftermath of our disaster of an attempt to take down Ultron, the people had pretty much named us public enemy number one. I could practically hear my Dad tutting and shaking his head as he prepared his "I told you so" speech.
We were sailing just above the clouds. I couldn't help but notice how perfect they were. Large, fluffy, and a brilliantly sparkling white, like some sort of children's three-dimensional pop-up book clouds ripped off the page and plastered in the blue canvas. Given the solemn atmosphere inside the jet it felt wrong that something so beautifully flawless could exist in the presence of our broken mess, as if the earth was taunting us and all our failure with something so pure and whole.
I let my eyes fall from the window, lifting my head off the wall and turning back to face the problem in front of me. I don't think any of the team had been expecting the level of combat they had experienced. Not only had Ultron shown up at the navy yard but so had the Maximoff twins. I had been sitting on the jet the whole time, trying to gain some sort of understanding of what was happening from listening to the comms. I'm not sure if I'd ever felt so useless. I wasn't normally someone who was itching for a fight, to be truly honest I hated combat of any sort. But in that moment I felt that if Steve hadn't locked the doors of the jet from the outside, I was sure I would have immediately broken my promise not to leave. Then again, I don't think my being there would have been able to do much to help when people as powerful as they all are were tearing apart at the seams.
Even so, I knew the frustration I had felt at the futility of me not being able to do my job could not compare to the way the rest of the group felt. The Maximoff girl, Wanda... she had done something to them, messed with their heads somehow. My biggest concern was Bruce. The girl had somehow triggered him into his hulk state causing everyone's worst fear, civilian casualties, to come to life. He was currently slumped on the floor, his hair a curled mess and his eyes distraught. Nat was sitting next to him looking similarly horrified by the events that had transpired. I saw her whisper to him occasionally and if it hadn't been for the seriousness of the situation, the interaction would have been incredibly cute. I loved that even though they had experienced something so traumatic, they were both still looking out for eachother.
Tony and Thor were similarly quiet and reserved for the majority of the flight. It was strange, not hearing Tony's endless sarcastic quips or Thor's booming laugh. I knew the change in their attitudes would not last forever but it was jarring to see the difference all the same. The only one whose attitude hadn't visibly changed was Steve. He was sitting on a bench in the back corner of the jet looking reserved, sullen and pissed off. If I hadn't known better I would have said it was just a regular Tuesday.
I stood up from my seat, having every intention of going to talk to Tony and yet somehow my feet were moving in the opposite direction. It was as if some evil puppet master had taken over control of my body, pulling my strings until I was standing right in front of Steve. Then he dragged the strings to the seat next him and superglued my butt to the bench.
He turned slightly to look at me, his eyes icy cold, once again freezing me in my place. An eyebrow raised as he stared at me expectantly, waiting for me to speak. Only I didn't even know why I was sitting here with him.
"Are you just gonna sit there and stare at me like an idiot?"
My lips parted, mouth falling open slightly. I searched through the files of my brain, waiting for the signals to fire and for words to fall into place but nothing came. Instead I settled on the only word that I seemed capable of saying, shrugging my shoulders.
"Maybe."
I'm not sure what kind of reaction I was hoping to see from him. A smile? Or a smirk maybe? Being openly self-depreciating with someone I didn't like, not denying his labeling of me as an idiot was not in my nature but I guess in this case it was kind of true. This was Steve Rogers. Captain Asshat. We didn't do this. So why had I felt the need to?
Whatever I had hoped to gain from this interaction was an apparent failure because other than turning his head back to stare at the oh so interesting grey wall on the opposite side of the jet, I got nothing. The wall was slightly reflective, casting an imperfect mirrored image back at us. There had to have been more than two feet or so in between us but the distorted reflection made it look like mere inches, almost touching. We sat in silence for a moment before I felt the need to speak again.
"Everyone's pretty shaken up."
I mentally high-fived myself for my remarkable ability at pointing out the obvious. Everyone's pretty shaken up. No shit, Sherlock. What the hell is wrong with me?
"Are you okay?"
Wow I was really on a roll here. Maybe I should ask him about the weather? Or his favorite color?
I expected him not to respond to this either. He hadn't moved a muscle, his back still rigid against the wall, eyes trained forward. I was begging my feet to move, for my legs to carry me out of this seat but still they wouldn't budge. Preparing myself for a lifetime of moody silence on this bench I leaned my back against the wall too, mimicking his position. Then he responded.
"I'm always okay."
I mulled over this response for a moment, wondering if he actually meant it or not. My gut instinct said no. You ask a stupid question, you get a stupid answer. But there was something in the tone of his voice that made the answer seem genuine, even authentic. As if he had found some way to not let the horrors, like the ones he had seen today, affect him in any kind of way. He was just in a perpetual state of okayness, not bad, not great, just okay.
"What's that like?"
My question was rhetorical, just another lame attempt at lightening the mood. Steve however, seemed to take it literally.
"As if you don't already know." He scoffed, if anything his eyes had become darker, some charcoal mist clouding over the pale blues.
"I don't. Unlike some other human cyborgs I know I actually feel things. Joy, loss, anger, grief, worry." I listed, resenting the fact that he thought I hadn't experienced these things, wishing I could break that image in his head of my cookie-cutter life without having to give him any personal details.
"Worry?" He spoke, still staring at the reflection in the wall across. "Having a hard time, Princess?"
I stiffened. His tone was still cool and unaffected but the impact it had on me was anything but. I scrambled, looking for some sort of barrier between me and the words that would come from him next but came up empty, defenseless.
"I can see why you'd be having such a hard time. All locked up, safe and sound in your ivory tower while the rest of us are out in the real world getting our hands dirty?"
My fists clenched tightly where they rested in my lap. So tightly that I was sure my nails would leave scars where they dug into my palms, scratching more than just the surface. I was seriously beginning to question my sanity. Why had I not put up more of a fight when I found my feet dragging me in his direction. Was I some sort of masochist intent on putting myself in painful situations? Or worse, was I some delusional optimist, convinced that I could make an arragont, spiteful, asshole change his arragont, spiteful, asshole ways?
"You're conviently forgetting who locked me up in the first place." I said, not even bothering to hide the anger in my voice. "Of course you'd have to see it that way because if I'm the Princess that makes you the white knight, right?"
I was facing him completely now, I could see his chest was rising and falling quicker than before while he still refused to look at me. My resentment and confusion over the hot and cold of the past weeks with him seemed to finally snap as I was pushed to my breaking point.
"I'm trying to do my job. You're too busy commenting on my clothes and staring at your own fucking reflection to notice that your giant ass horse and giant ass armor keep standing in my way." I said a little louder than I meant to, gesturing at the wall. Thankfully everyone else was still too preoccupied to notice or care. At my words he seemed to snap out of whatever trance he was in, his head finally snapping away from the mirror and in my direction.
"What exactly am I getting in the way of?" He asked, evenly. "What is it other than taking notes and getting concussions that you bring to the table?"
There was no use in hiding the flash of pain in my eyes as he threw one of my biggest insecurities and deepest fears in my face. It was one thing to feel completely useless, it was a completely other thing to hear your boss call you that too. I don't think I had ever felt so small, so inferior. Not that he cared, or would ever know. He would never understand the depth of how badly I had wanted to prove myself with this job and how miserable it felt to know that evidently I was failing.
I wished there was something I could say to wound him the way he's wounded me. It's the most shameful, selfish feeling, and his constant ability to bring out the worst in me makes me shake all the more with a rage-filled vengeance. I search for an insult, anything that might penetrate through his shield and his red and white striped suit and straight into his soul but I know I will never find anything. I know that there is nothing you can say, no words of venom in the dictionary that could ever hurt a man who has no heart. He is nothing but a suit and it was time for me to stop seeing him as anything else.